
SOME BOYS AND 
GIRLS IN AMERICA 


MARGARET T. APPLEGAKTH 
























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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 







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SOME BOYS AND GIRLS 
IN AMERICA 


MARGARET T. APPLEGARTH 
































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This new book of yours ought to make geographies and maps 
the most friendly books in the world. 











SOME BOYS AND 
GIRLS IN AMERICA 


BY 

MARGARET T. APPLEGARTH 

Author of “India Inklings” “Lamflighters Across the Sea” 
“Missionary Stories for Little Folks” etc . 


WITH DECORATIONS BY 
THE AUTHOR 


NEW 


YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




23 - 12.780 



COPYRIGHT, 1923 , 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



SOME BOYS AND GIRLS IN AMERICA. II 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

SEP 10'23 

©Cl ATI - 1817 



Z 3 



like the contents of this particular book 
among the very best in your library! 

CONTENTS 

I Let’s Discover America, 13 
II Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels *,23 

III Early Bird Catches Christmas *, 44 

IV Big Chief Like - Thunder - on - the - Mountain 

Gives Thanks, 57 

V Finis and the February Face *, 65 
VI Banana Beppo’s Go-cart, 83 
VII As Easy as Rolling Off a Log *, 90 
VIII Long Live the Little Prince of Wails, 106 
IX Shining Mark *, 114 
X Mind Your P’s and Q’s, 133 
XI Senor Sombrero’s Spectacles, 142 
XII A Star in the Milky Way, 151 

XIII Noah’s Rainbow, 159 

XIV An Orphan and the Bottled Cow, 166 
XV Little “Pictures” Have Big Ears, 173 

vii 








Contents 


viii 

XVI Not as Black as He Was Painted, 183 
XVII If Wishes Were Horses, 193 
XVIII Black Is Such a Lovely Color *, 201 
XIX Movable Pappy and Mammy Stand-still, 213 
XX “Let Nothing You Dismay,” 222 


Note: For 'permission to use the starred (*) chapters the author 
gratefully acknowledges the courtesy of everyland, West 
Medford, Massachusetts. 




This new book of yours ought to make geographies 
and maps the most friendly books in the world, 
Frontispiece. 

Let’s Discover America, 19 
Oh, that Lonely Tucker Cabin, 41 
Bloom, Little Tree, 53 
The Big Chief’s Tepee, 61 
Susie’s Special Sunday Place, 79 
Nice Fresh-a Banan’, 87 
Two Bumps on a Log, 103 
Smoke Children, 111 

The Home of Wooden Pencils, Pen, etc., 129 

Lighting the Chinese Lantern, 139 

Through Rafaelo’s Eyes, 147 

Tailing the Donkey, 155 

In Totem-pole Land, 163 

Introducing Mr. Raw Fish Eater, 169 

My! It Am Jess Lubly! 179 

The Watermelon Bribe, 189 

If Wishes Were Hobbies, 197 

Br’er Rabbit Totes Home the Wash, 209 

Off to Discover America, 219 

The Forgotten Present, 229 


IX 








SOME BOYS AND GIRLS 
IN AMERICA 



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SOME BOYS AND GIRLS 
IN AMERICA 


I 

let's DISCOVER AMERICA 

“ly/TAINE, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachu- 
setts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,” droned poor 
Peter Prim, with his geography propped open on the 
table before him; then he gave a perfectly prodigious 
yawn which almost rattled the pictures on the wall, 
after which he had to start all over again reciting states: 
“Let me see,” said he, “how do they go? Maine, New 
Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
Connecticut—oh, bother! I just hate geography! 
What’s the use of knowing about so many stupid out- 
of-the-way places where I’ll probably never go? And 
who will I ever know from Virginia, for instance? 
Or that state called Oklahoma? Or California? Or— 
or Alaska?” And he yawned again. 

Instantly a little old man across the table spoke up: 
“Tut! Tut!” he chided Peter, “the trouble with you 
is that you haven’t discovered America yet!” 

Peter was very much surprised to see any one sitting 
there, but he politely replied: “Excuse me, sir, but I 
13 


14 Some Boys and Girls in America 

thought Columbus had already discovered America, 
way back in the year 1492, you know.” 

“Stuff and nonsense!” snapped the old gentleman, 
“America is always being discovered; every blessed day 
somebody’s doing it. Bless me, dear boy, if Columbus 
alone had discovered this continent neither you nor I 
would be sitting here this minute.” 

“And may I ask who you are, sir?” Peter inquired 
curiously. 

“That’s all right—my name is Jog” the old fellow 
smiled, “and I’m the man who puts the Jog in Geogra¬ 
phy; perhaps you never knew before why half the 
people in the world pronounce it /ogrraphy; well, it’s 
on account of me! Because I’m eternally nudging ’em 
and jogging ’em into discovering countries for them¬ 
selves. Poor souls, they insist on finding geography 
a dull, dead, stupid study, whereas it’s really the liveliest 
thing in school. That is, when you’re jogged awake 
to the thrills in it!” 

“Gracious,” Peter cried, “I think you’d better jog me 
then, for I can’t see how a map could ever be thrilling!” 

“It is, provided you’re fond of adventures, and 
stories about ships and sailors and fighting. In fact 
my jogs are in the nature of animated cartoons,—did 
you ever see any in the movies?” 

“W-well, I’ve seen Mutt and Jeff,” Peter confessed. 

“Oh, yes, but those are very tame compared to mine, 
dear boy. Suppose we begin discovering America at 
once. First let me borrow your pencil and this piece of 
paper while I draw the outlines of—well, you tell me 
what I’m drawing!” 


Let's Discover America 


15 


“Looks like North America,” Peter said briskly. 

“And North America it is,” said the curious Mr. 
Jog, “only it’s an empty, unpopulated spot, hundreds 
of years ago before anybody began discovering it. But 
look at all these animated figures I’m drawing over the 
map—here’s one of them chasing another with a toma¬ 
hawk, watch him scalp the other—ah! dead. I wipe 
that figure off the map.” 

“Indians!” shuddered Peter in a bloodcurdling whis¬ 
per as whole tribes of these red men began stealing 
across the map, scalping each other in the most fiendish 
fashion. Peter declared the very squeak of Mr. Jog’s 
pencil sounded like fierce war whoops., Then in the 
midst of these grim fightings the pencil began drawing 
ships across the ocean: funny old-fashioned high- 
pooped frigates they were, with full sails, for all the 
world like the ones in “Treasure Island,” in case you’ve 
ever seen that book. 

“What ship is this, sir?” Peter asked, as Mr. Jog’s 
pencil made the first ship land. 

“It belongs to Cavaliers from England, my boy, 
they’ve come over to discover America and they’re 
naming this place where they landed Jamestown, in 
honor of King James of England. See this man I’m 
drawing now,—well, he’s Captain John Smith, and this 
pretty Indian girl is Pocahontas who is going to save 
his life when—” 

“Oh, I already know that story,” Peter interrupted 
proudly; “so tell me,—what’s that queer shanty your 
pencil is making now?” 

“It’s the first church building ever put up in Amer- 


16 Some Boys and Girls in America 

ica, my boy,” said Mr. Jog, “it’s not a bad idea for you 
to remember that church. Now watch my next ship 
landing. Recognize any of the people stepping on 
shore, considerably farther north than Jamestown?” 

“Indeed I do know them,” Peter laughed, as ani¬ 
mated little figures began hopping from a sloop onto a 
rock: “It’s Plymouth Rock, and that’s Captain Myles 
Standish and John Alden and Priscilla. Oh, yes, and 
that Indian you’re drawing now is Massasoit; and 
that’s corn the Indians are teaching them to plant. 
That building’s a church—I remember how the Pil¬ 
grims came over here specially to get freedom to wor¬ 
ship God as they wanted to. That was in 1620, sir.” 

“Good for you!” said Mr. Jog, “and here’s a third 
ship, some years later, full of Dutchmen and a sailor 
named Heinrich Hudson who’s going to have a river 
named for him before long. See these Indians on 
Manhattan Island where the Dutch decide to settle— 
what is my pencil making them do?” 

“The Dutch people seem to be handing money to the 
Indians, who are leaving the Island. Looks as if the 
men from Holland had bought it.” 

“Right you are!” cried Mr. Jog, “bought it for a 
measly $24, too. Yet it’s on Manhattan Island that the 
present vast city of New York stands, where several 
million people live. Funny, isn’t it?” 

“Very funny,” said Peter, “and very cheap. I guess 
the Indians didn’t realize what they were losing.” 

“No, not then,” said Mr. Jog, “but the trouble is 
that each new shipload of people kept pushing them 
farther and farther away from the places where they 


Let’s Discover America 17 

used to live. Now here, for instance, comes a boat¬ 
load of Quakers with good old William Penn on board. 
Watch him hold pow-wows with the Indians; he’s buy¬ 
ing land which the Quakers will soon name Pennsyl¬ 
vania—Penn’s Wood. And the Indians liked this Pale- 
Face always; but now watch—” 

Peter fairly jumped: “Oh, stop, Mr. Jog, stop! 
Surely you don’t know what your pencil is doing, sir!” 
For it is a fact that there was so much fighting taking 
place on the map that Peter’s eyes almost popped out 
of his head, while white men and red men fought end¬ 
lessly and the Indians finally got pushed off into the 
most undesirable parts of America. 

“Oh, but that’s not fair,” Peter cried, “America was 
theirs first, you see.” 

“Exactly,” said Mr. Jog, “and I’m glad my first jog 
has actually waked you up. I wouldn’t be surprised if 
you’d be quite glad to hear how Early Bird caught 
Christmas and to meet Big Chief Like-Thunder-On- 
The-Mountain by and by to hear why he’s thankful. 
He’s from Oklahoma, by the way, that state you were 
too bored to memorize! And now watch this other 
old-fashioned boat landing down south in Jamestown 
where my first ship landed. Only look who comes out 
of this ship, my boy.” 

“My, just look at the poor negroes,” cried Peter, 
“they look scared to death. Have they come to dis¬ 
cover America, too?” 

“Alas,” answered Mr. Jog, “they were brought here 
from Africa much against their will to discover what 
an awful thing slavery can be.” 


18 Some Boys and Girls in America 

“Poor things! But Abraham Lincoln finally fixed 
all that for them/’ Peter remembered, as he shuddered 
at the rapid pencil pictures of huge plantations and 
broiling negroes and cruel overseers. “I’ve had my 
second jog, sir! Virginia isn’t just a spot on the map 
to me any more!” 

“Of course not,” said Mr. Jog, “so you’ll be glad to 
meet Flotsam and Jetsam to find out why black is such 
a lovely color, and discover, if wishes were horses, what 
Leonidas would do. Now here come other ships. . . 

“Well, I should say so!” gasped Peter, as shipload 
after shipload came over from all parts of Europe and 
were dumped on Atlantic ports. “Look here, Mr. Jog, 
if you don’t stop you’ll have no room left in America. 
You’ve almost emptied parts of Europe, there won’t be 
room for you and me. Who in the world are all these 
people ?” 

“Ha! Ha! Another jog I’ve given you, I see! Oh, 
they’re just Irish and Swedish and Danish folks, and 
Italians and Rumanians and Greeks, and Lithuanians 
and Russians and Prussians and Swiss, and Spaniards 
and Finlanders and French and Germans and Portu¬ 
guese, and more Jews than ever lived in Jerusalem are 
settling here in New York City. See them tucked un¬ 
comfortably away in these crowded tenements, whole 
families wedged into one room.” 

Peter gasped. “Why don’t they move out into the 
country?” 

“Why indeed?” groaned Mr. Jog. “Because half of 
them are needed to run our factories and our mills and 
dig our ditches, while the other half don’t know there’s 


Let’s Discover America 


19 



I think that this must be the kind of a picture known as a 
Bird’s-Eye View, not that a bird had anything whatever to do 
with my inkbottle; but it is rather as if you were flying over 
the map seeing geographical dots come to life at a single glance— 
surely, already, you are wanting to discover Early Bird and 
Alonzo and the Sammies and poor Noah. 




You are each hereby appointed to be little human 
Statues of Liberty holding up the light to the people 
who walk in darkness. 






Let’s Discover America 


21 


any country to go to! It's rather hard on the young¬ 
sters as you will see when you meet the Little Prince of 
Wails and hear why Finis had a February face. And 
now I’ll move my pencil over to the Pacific Coast to 
draw more shiploads of folks from Asia—just see the 
yellow people from China and Japan and the brown 
people from India coming over to discover America.” 

Peter was fascinated by the quaint Orientals who 
were rapidly filling up the map: “Why, they’re heathen, 
Mr. Jog!” he cried, as he saw some of the Chinese 
kneeling before fat wooden idols. “Oh, I didn’t know 
we had real heathen in America.” 

“Then it’s high time you were jogged awake, Peter, 
my boy. You’re like lots of other Christians, you need 
to discover your own America. But tell me, after 
you’ve discovered on the map heathendom among the 
Chinese and injustice to the Indians and unhappiness 
among the negroes and trouble among the immigrants 
from Europe, then what comes next ?” 

“Doing something to help!” Peter shouted excitedly. 

“Exactly—and you can find it as easy as rolling off 
a log, if—” Mr. Jog was beginning to say, when lo 
and behold, Peter’s mother said: “Well of all things, 
Peter Prim, studying yet? And geography, too! 
Why, my dear, it’s nine o’clock and high time you were 
in bed, yet there you sit with your eyes fairly glued on 
the map, as if all those little spots were simply fasci¬ 
nating. Wake up, dear!” 

Peter awoke with a perfectly prodigious yawn and 
looked around completely bewildered: “Oh, mother,” he 
cried, “I do hope you haven’t made me lose the Jog 


22 Some Boys and Girls in America 

in Geography! I was just learning to discover Amer- 

• __ n 

ica. 

But he needn’t have worried, for when once the jog 
comes to any of us every littlest spot on our maps will 
instantly become alive with the interesting people who 
are even now discovering America with you and me, 
as the following stories will prove. 


II 


TOBIJAH AND THE TUCKER TARHEELS 

/ TpOBIJAH had his hands full. More than full! 

For this is the story of “when pappy went to 
fight the war and never come back to the mountings.” 
And without pappy, Tobijah had the whole family on 
his hands. Somehow they seemed even more than they 
actually were, owing to their names: straight out of the 
Bible these came, for once upon a time pappy and 
mammy had had a Bible, indeed they had, but when 
they made the moving—would you believe it?—that 
Bible “got losted”! So now that they were so com¬ 
pletely out of a Bible it was a great comfort to mammy 
that parts of it were left securely fastened on her chil¬ 
dren. No one in the mountains had any finer mouth- 
fillers, for mammy and pappy had certainly been won¬ 
ders in picking names so that not a child of theirs could 
ever get mistaken for a neighbor’s (as so easily happens 
when a whole blockful of Marys, Ruths and Williams 
rub elbows in one city street). But who could ever 
mix Tobijah or Habbakuk, Solomon or Queen-of- 
Sheba (all in one piece you said her, or just Quee for 
short!), Bethlehem or Boanerges? For the next-to- 
the-last baby they had selected Pildash, thinking it 
would be easier to shout across the hills when he 
reached the running-away age. Meanwhile they called 
him Dash, for short, for just as city children save their 
23 


24 Some Boys and Girls in America 

sashes and their Sunday clothes for state occasions, so 
the Tuckers saved their names for special times! 

They never tired of questioning about this Book they 
came from: “I reckon you-uns must have read it plumb 
through, mammy, to find so many names ?” 

But mammy shook her head and pappy shook his. 
“No! No!” he said, “she done had no book-raising, 
your ma were just jerked up, so to speak.” 

“Then how come you ever found us in that Bible ?” 

So finally, in the secret of the family, they admitted 
that they had never read the front part of the Book 
at all,—it took a powerful lot of spelling to read even 
a page. (“Indeed it must!” gasped the little awe-struck 
Tuckers.) But way over in the back they had been 
fortunate enough to find some pages labeled in big 
letters “Proper Names.” And if proper for Bible 
people, how very, very proper for the little Tuckers! 
It was the luckiest thing in the world that they had 
had a name all picked out for the newest baby, for you 
will remember that when they moved over the hills of 
North Carolina their Bible “got losted.” But the name 
was firmly fixed in every one’s mind all ready for the 
baby: the very best name of all, pappy thought, for he 
had discovered that the oldest man in the world had 
been called “Methuselah”; and before he went to war 
he used to pat his new little Methuselah Tucker on 
the head and say: “Now quit your squawling, Thusey; 
I reckon you’d best save your breath till you gets old 
like pappy.” 

Methuselah, however (who should have been a boy, 
of course, but wasn’t!), had her own ideas of life, and 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 25 

being quiet was not one of them. She wailed loudest 
of all on the day when pappy went down the mountains 
to fight the war, and perhaps she really knew best about 
this. For you will remember that pappy never came 
back. Which was the reason why Tobijah had his 
hands full. 

There is something entirely different about Carolina 
mountain fields. Even after you get the rocks out of 
them they lie, bias-fashion, upon steep hillsides and 
many a tarheel farmer has been known to tumble out 
of his own cornfield into a neighbor’s! But Tobijah 
did not have even that small comfort, as there was 
no neighbor near enough. Just rocks. And rills. And 
templed hills. Yet he never sang, “My Country, ’Tis 
of Thee!”—for the simple reason that he had never 
heard it. You may think this queer, when pappy had 
gone off to fight our war; but, you see, pappy only 
went because down at the cross-roads one day another 
man happened along and told him that there was a big 
war, that strong men were needed, that they paid $30 
a month to soldiers—so pappy enlisted. But he him¬ 
self had never heard “America” until he reached the 
training camp. So you will see that there are parts of 
the United States quite different from other parts— 
way, way behind the times, fully two hundred years be¬ 
hind! And in the mountains of North Carolina life is 
especially different, somehow. Very primitive, with 
log cabin homes that look as if they had fallen by sheer 
chance into little clearings on the mountain sides. 

Oh, that Tucker log cabin! With its rough-hewn 
logs warped so wide apart that the cat and all her 


26 Some Boys and Girls in America 

kittens could slip in or out of the chinks by day or night 
quite easily; and through those cracks b’r’r’r’r’r! how 
the mountain winds did whistle on chill evenings! But 
there was the open fireplace where mammy cooked the 
meals right on the hearth (with “spits” and “cranes” 
and “baking boards”)—just such a fire and just such 
a cabin as the one where Abraham Lincoln used to read 
and study and ponder years upon years ago. But, ah 
me, there was this difference between Lincoln and 
Tucker, for neither Tobijah, ’Bakuk, Solomon or 
Queenofsheba could read or write a single word. 
Mammy had no book to teach them letters from, for 
one thing: and what’s the good of reading anyhow, she 
probably thought, when there were nine hungry mouths 
to feed and Tobijah must hoe and plant, Queenofsheba 
must be forever going down the hill to fetch a pail of 
water, while Habbakuk tended pigs, and Boanerges 
chopped wood, wood, wood! Thusey had the only 
really pleasant Tucker occupation, since lying on her 
back and howling came so very natural to her. 

On a certain afternoon that began like any other 
afternoon, you are to picture Queenofsheba down by 
the brook washing the clothes with a vigorous rub-a- 
dub-dub. Dash splashed around in the brook making 
a perfect nuisance of himself, stumbling over boulders; 
and Quee was being rather stern with him, I fear, when 
suddenly she stopped in the middle of a sentence and 
stood there with Dash dangling in mid-air. . . . For 
an apparition was approaching! “A ghost!” she 
trembled. “But are there ever haunts afore sundown?” 
No, of course not; don’t be plumb foolish, Queenof- 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 27 

sheba, can’t you see it’s just a white-robed lady on a 
whitish horse, riding along up the bed of the brook, 
looking much relieved to see somebody ahead. Even 
somebody with a small boy dangling in mid-air at the 
end of an arm! 

Queenofsheba dropped poor Dash, and stared at this 
Lady From Far Off, longing to run, but rooted to the 
spot. All the women she had even seen wore sun- 
bonnets, yet here was a person with something entirely 
different—covered with “artificials.” Queer: but nice! 
Then the Lady smiled, and Quee felt the stiffening 
begin to return to her startled knees. 

“Is there a house near by?” the stranger asked. 

Quee nodded. (Her tongue was still tucked up close 
against the roof of her mouth from fear.) 

“Then could you show me how to get there, for I’ve 
lost my way; and maybe your father could direct me.” 

“Pappy went to fight the war, and he never come 
back.” 

“Oh, I’m so sorry! But your mother—is she 
home ?” 

“Yep, mammy’s around. Fetch your nag this way.” 
So Quee and the Lady went up the hill to the log cabin. 
And nothing was ever quite the same again for the 
Tuckers. 

For although the Lady had lost her way and had 
seemed in a hurry to find it again, she gave one glance 
at that lonely cabin with a hill sitting in its front yard 
and another hill sitting in its back yard and no neigh¬ 
bors to be seen for miles, then she sat right down in 
mammy’s wobbly splint-seated chair and started in talk- 


28 Some Boys and Girls in America 

ing with this backwoods mother who probably had had 
no caller in years. Ma Tucker must have been “sav¬ 
ing up” for company, for she simply couldn't get 
talked out—all about how pappy went to war, how 
Thusey never quit yelling (“Now what makes her, 
anyhow?”), how Tobijah had done stuck his toes into 
these cornfields and was aiming to get crops like pappy 
got. . . . 

The Lady From Far Off unpinned the hat-with-the- 
artificials and said she'd spend the night, for the sun 
had actually begun to set before mammy got halfway 
through with Tobijah, and there was still little dumb 
Beth to discuss. So mammy beamingly mixed up some 
flapjacks and slapped them on a piece of board to bake 
on the hearth, then sliced off enough bacon for supper. 

But when they all sat down to eat, the small Tuckers 
were really too tongue-tied to chew! At least until 
the strange Lady looked out at the sunset and cried: 
“Oh, just look at those hills and valleys now! As if 
a giant clerk in some big store had unrolled yards and 
yards of soft green velvets, piling them up in folds of 
loveliness for us to choose from! I choose that little 
blue-green ridge for mine, the one that’s leaning up 
against the fat pink cloud. . . .” 

“My! Don’t she be a queer-un?” snickered Bo¬ 
anerges, taken off his guard by this delightful non¬ 
sense about clouds and stores and velvet hills. 

“I’m not the least bit queer!” the Lady laughed. 
“Now tell me, Boanerges, where did such a peaceful 
little fellow as you ever get that fierce and war-like 
name ?” 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 29 

“Pappy fetched it out of the Bible/' explained a 
chorus of small Tuckers, “pappy fetched us all out of 
the Bible!” 

“And then the Bible got losted,” Boanerges added 
with gentle regret. 

“Oh, what a pity! And haven’t you a Bible now?” 

“No,” sighed Ma Tucker, “but it wouldn’t do us 
no good if we did have one, since nary a Tucker can 
read now that pa’s all gone. I reckon Bo and Dash 
ain’t never even seed a Bible, nor Methuselah, either.” 

“Well, that’s soon remedied,” cried the Lady From 
Far Off. “Wouldn’t one of you like to go out to the 
saddle bag on my horse and bring me the Bible in¬ 
side it?” 

Every blessed little Tucker made such a wild dash 
for the “Bible nag” that they almost took the log cabin 
along with them as they squeezed pell-mell through the 
doorway. 

“Ah me!” sighed the Lady to herself, wishing she 
knew some get-rich-quick way to work wonders in that 
gloomy house that had no books, and indeed, no any¬ 
thing else to speak of: the queerest furniture you ever 
saw, with Tuckers sitting around on empty kegs for 
chairs, and one curious bed in the corner—so lumpy 
that it looked like snow-crowned peaks of the Alps; 
and not so very snowy, either, when Thusey was always 
being ordered to quit her wallowing around on top of 
it. The Lady couldn’t help but wonder where she her¬ 
self would sleep that night; one bed would certainly be 
popular with ten sleepers claiming it! 

But before she solved this problem the Tuckers came 


30 Some Boys and Girls in America 

marching back in dignified procession, as people should 
who carry the Book they came from, a Book they never 
really expected to see. Yet here it was! With real 
gold edges, and leather-like pebbly black ant-hills all 
over it. “Or like the back of some snake,” suggested 
Solomon. But Queenofsheba silenced him with an 
awful scowl,—imagine saying such a common thing 
about a book so precious that she carried it in the folds 
of her calico skirt, afraid to handle it! 

“Did we sure-enough come out of that there ?” Dash 
asked, pointing, and probably wondering how from 
head-to-heels he had emerged from it. 

“Don’t you dast to touch it, Pildash Tucker!” Queen¬ 
ofsheba ordered fiercely. And the Lady From Far Off 
could have cried whole buckets of tears to see the 
stricken disappointment in those little Tucker faces. 
Why, why, they had been counting on touching it. 
“Not jess a lick-and-promise touch?” Dash begged 
wistfully. 

“My dears,” the Lady smiled, “it’s specially made for 
you to touch and touch and touch. And what’s more, 
in the place I come from there are lots of other Bibles, 
so this one I give to you right now. Yes, for keeps! 
If you like, I’ll read you stories from it, shall I?” 

They “liked”! 

As little thirsty plants drink in the rain, they sat 
around her, afraid to miss a syllable. Ma Tucker 
nodded proudly: “Yep, it’s sure enough the Book you- 
uns was took from. Perhaps you could even find their 
places in the Bible, could you ? Then I could see onct 
more how they look in printing.” 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 31 

So the Lady pointed out the Queen of Sheba chapter 
and the book of Solomon: you should have seen the 
twins! The little mountain Queenofsheba flounced 
her skirts with regal haughtiness while Solomon Tucker 
tried to look wondrous wise. And failed! How could 
he, when bangs of tousled hair drooped into his eyes 
and rope suspenders held up clumsy homespun trousers 
several sizes larger than he needed? (Ma Tucker 
sewed them to last all the time that he was growing 
up!) As for Boanerges Tucker, his gentle face grew 
positively awe-inspiring when he found that his name 
meant “Son of Thunder,” and that originally there had 
been two of him called James and John! So the Lady 
went the rounds—Habbakuk, Tobijah, Pildash and 
Methuselah: they each saw their names in print and 
heard all there was to tell about them, until the Lady 
From Far Off imagined she had finished everybody. 
But no, Ma Tucker pushed forward a small girl: 
“There’s still Beth; nary one of us knows what ails 
her, but she’s never spoke up proper. Just sets all day 
and looks around. Mebbe you-uns could do Beth a 
good turn by fishing her story out of your Bible.” 

“What’s Beth’s whole name?” 

Ma Tucker apologized: “I reckon you-uns won’t 
think much of it; you see, I was plumb took with it 
onct when I had a spell of sewing quilts, I fancied the 
hem part of her name—Bethlehem! Reckon mebbe 
you can’t even find it in that there Book.” 

Bethlehem Tucker’s big shy eyes peered at the Lady 
From Far Off, and nobody understood at all why the 
Lady should gather the little dumb girl into her arms 


32 Some Boys and Girls in America 

and onto her knees as she kissed her, crying: “Oh, but 
Beth has the loveliest name of you all, the very love¬ 
liest, for wasn’t it in Bethlehem where Christ was 
born ?” 

A silence fell. At first she thought this was because 
the Tuckers were impressed. But when she looked into 
their faces lighted only by the flickering logs upon the 
fireplace she saw that their expression said as plain as 
day: “Well, what of it? We’re waiting.” 

“D-don’t you know who Christ is ?” she stammered. 

“Nope!” The little Tuckers shook their heads, and 
Ma Tucker added: “ ’Taint as if I hadn’t always aimed 
to tell ’em lots of things, but I been so took up with 
work and tiredness. Eight kids is plenty. I reckon 
they knows who God Almighty is, all right, though.”' 

“Oh, yes,” nodded the Tuckers, God Almighty they 
knew. He was where you went when you died good. 
But when they heard the whole story of Bethlehem they 
agreed it was by far the dearest name of all, and smoth¬ 
ering their yawns begged eagerly to sit up all night and 
hear some more—for wasn’t this their only chance in 
a lifetime to catch up with news? But it was far too 
late already; so Tobijah dragged from underneath the 
bed another mattress on which all the boys lay down, 
while the others slept sideways, like sardines, upon the 
lumpy bed. And because she was the guest, the Lady 
From Far Off was given the edge nearest the fireplace, 
furthest from those draughty chinks between the 
logs. 

Long after the nine others were sound asleep she lay 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 33 

on the uncomfortable ridge of her share of the “Alps,” 
staring at the rafters. Queer things dangled down at 
her, looking queerer than ever in the shadows cast by 
the flickering firelight—but she knew that the fattest 
danglers were smoked hams hung up for winter use, 
while those slender spidery things were strings of dried 
fruits and vegetables. She pictured all the weary dig¬ 
ging, planting, and raking which Tobijah had to do 
before those vegetables could be harvested—with Hab- 
bakuk’s and Solomon’s help. She looked at the old 
spinning wheel in the corner on which all their shape¬ 
less Mother Hubbard frocks had been spun, and she 
pictured how mammy and little Queenofsheba prob¬ 
ably toiled from dawn to dusk. One day exactly like 
another. 

“I’m probably the only exciting thing that’s ever 
happened to them!” she sighed, and the logs on the 
hearth snapped apart as if to answer: “Quite true! 
Quite true!” while the night wind whistled down the 
hillsides moaning through the chinks: “You! You!” 

“Yes,” agreed the Lady sleeplessly, “you needn’t re¬ 
mind me! I know only too well that I was sent to save 
these lonely Tuckers—and all the million others like 
them! But, dear Christ of Bethlehem, how—how ?” 

* * * 

But in the morning when the mists rolled up from 
the valleys the Lady From Far Off knew “how.” She 
tiptoed to the doorway and hurried to the brook to 
wash, but the twins discovered her with toothbrush and 
paste. 


34 Some Boys and Girls in America 

“How often do you-uns do that there?” Queen- 
ofsheba questioned curiously. 

“Three times a day!” the Lady answered, whereupon 
Solomon said scornfully: “ ’Pears like you-uns was a 
heap of trouble to yourself!” 

“Down where I live every single boy has toothbrush 
drill,” she smiled, and spent the morning telling other 
wonders of this school for boys where she longed to 
have Tobijah come. There he could learn new ways 
of farming as well as get book-knowledge, and—would 
they believe it?—but some Christian children from up 
north had sent money to pay for some boy’s schooling 
one whole year—some very special boy, they wrote. 
And it had dawned on her that Tobijah was special! 
Could they spare him for this chance ? 

Such a hub-bub! Solomon was sure that he and 
’Bakuk could hoe and plant and harvest. Boanerges 
also boasted of his powers. Dash volunteered to mind 
the pigs! So when must Toby start? And how long 
must Toby stay? And wouldn’t it be fine when Toby 
was a scholar! My! 

There was no calendar in the cabin, of course, but 
before she left, the Lady notched the door-jamb with 
nine nicks. “Each day cross off a nick,” she ordered, 
“and on the ninth morning start for school, Tobijah. 
I’ll be watching for you! Good-by.” 

So nothing ever was the same again. For in their 
endless loneliness she had wakened a new interest. And 
there was the precious Bible, too, wrapped in mammy’s 
patchwork quilt. Moreover, every morning Tobijah 
marked off a nick upon the door-jamb until the ninth 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 35 

dawn came. Then solemnly the Tuckers escorted him 
to the rising of the nearest hill. 

“Nary one of you must come farther,” he ordered, 
trying hard to swallow a queer marble in his throat. 

Queenofsheba clutched his arm: “Stuff your head 
jam-full, Toby Tucker! And now I reckon we’d best 
turn back, for Dash and Thusey have come a right 
smart piece for babies.” 

So Tobijah traveled on alone, while the marble in 
his throat grew boulder-size. And he thought it was 
a powerful misty morning. But the sun had never risen 
quite so pink or clear; the mist was all in Toby’s eyes, 
I fear. 

“Hi, there!” yelled Queenofsheba from ’way off. 
“Mind — you — care — for — mammy's — shoes! Save—• 
’em—till—you— gets —there!” 

From the far bend of the woods below Tobijah 
waved obediently. He could not yell on account of 
the marble that felt like a boulder. But what had 
struck Quee, anyhow? He hugged the shoes closer 
under his arm: he reckoned he knew without being told 
how to be careful of the onliest shoes in the whole 
Tucker family! 

At noon he ate a hunk of bacon and dry bread, then 
tramped on and on and on till sundown, when he slept 
in a farmhouse. Dawn saw him off once more, and 
toward noon he spotted “it” down in the valley: neat 
red roofs that covered clean white houses: School!! 
Another mile, then he sat down to put on mammy’s 
shoes. They felt too tight! He dusted off his tight 
homespun breeches and stepping jauntily up the peb- 


36 Some Boys and Girls in America 

bled driveway, tried to act exactly as if he’d come to 
school in the valley a dozen times before. But the 
marble that had spent yesterday in his throat was now 
bouncing around in his heart, and I don’t know what 
he would have done if his Lady From Far Off had not 
been near-to, watching for him at the window, so that 
the worst was over before it began. And Tobijah 
started in school. 

* * * 

1 Everybody who has ever gone to school knows what 
a vacation is—everybody but Tobijah. He was simply 
thunderstruck. 

“I thought I was in for a year!” he exclaimed, when 
the long holiday period arrived. He hardly knew what 
to make of it, until he suddenly realized that of all 
places in the world a certain little log cabin in a certain 
little cleared patch of ground on a certain hillside 
couldn’t be reached fast enough. But the Lady From 
Far Off had a wise suggestion: “Wouldn’t the family 
love to have you bring them something ?” 

They would! But the things Tobijah wanted were 
curious indeed. There was that dog-eared old cata¬ 
logue from a mail order house in Chicago, the one with 
a thousand pages—could he have that? Certainly, for 
wasn’t it discarded in the waste-basket, being for the 
year 1903! Well, next he would like eight tooth¬ 
brushes, or were they too expensive ? They were, but 
the Lady never said so, and provided eight with her 
compliments. Then he wanted to borrow a bell. The 
very biggest soundingest bell, one that could clang up a 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 37 

hill and down a hill. It was a secret, this! But he 
promised to bring it back when school opened. So with 
the heavy catalogue and the toothbrushes under one 
arm, and the big bell and mammy’s shoes under the 
other arm, Tobijah tramped home. 

And the little Tuckers nearly ate him alive! They 
had not counted on vacations, either. But now they 
wanted to know what school was like, anyway. 

Well, it was a building, but not the kind of a build¬ 
ing you-uns ever saw. For it was a house on top of a 
house, then another house on top of that other house. 
Floors, they were called. Had any Tucker ever known 
that houses came in layers? None of them had, not 
even mammy. ’Peared to her like you couldn’t get up 
from one floor to another, could you? 

“There were steps, indoors; they went through the 
ceilings into the place above. First week, mammy, 
every time I walked up I tumbled down,” Tobijah ad¬ 
mitted sheepishly. “What with the newness of wear¬ 
ing shoes and not knowing where to step on the stairs, 
lots of new boys kept falling, too.” 

Mammy stared: “Don’t tell me you-uns wore them 
shoes right along that first week ?” 

Yes, and that first month, and all the other eight 
months, too. Boys always did, in school. But he had 
tramped home, barefoot, to save them! Then he told 
about wallpaper. Not a single room with chinks 
through the log walls, but paper with pictures every¬ 
where. And pianos to play music on. And a bed for 
every boy to sleep in alone. Toothbrushes, too. One 


38 Some Boys and Girls in America 

apiece! You used them this way, see—up and down, 
with a plenty of water. Yes, they were a present for 
keeps. So was the big fat book of pictures. 

But what was school? Well, school was a room 
with black walls, and when the teacher ordered it, you 
wrote on the black walls with a white stick. And his 
room was full of very little children learning A B C’s. 

“But you ain’t little!” cried Queenofsheba, 

“But I had to learn A B C’s, didn’t I?” groaned 
Tobijah, his cheeks flaming red at the bitter shame of 
those days when he, so big at fourteen, had to sit with 
the astonished primary infants and vie with them in 
scratching letters on slates! How could he tell the 
Tuckers what grit it took; or how once he tried to run 
away, but the Lady From Far Off had again been 
near-to, and stopped him. These things were not for 
Tucker ears, since it was plain that from Thusey to 
mammy they knew he must have been the smartest boy 
in school. (“Some day I’m aiming to be,” Toby ad¬ 
mitted.) But one secret he did share: the secret of 
the bell that could clang up a hill and down a hill. 

“I got two months till school takes up again,” he ex¬ 
plained, “so I reckoned we could have some reg’lar do¬ 
ings here every morning, while I learned you-uns and 
the Briffle children down the hill how to write. Then 
if you-uns ever gets to school you won’t have the 
misery of squatting with primaries to giggle at your 
blunders. See?” 

Of course they didn’t see all that Toby saw in his 
mind’s eye; but they did see that these “reg’lar doings” 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 39 

were going to be powerful fine. So clingle-clangle-clink 
the bell rang up the hills and down the hills each morn¬ 
ing until little Carolina tarheels from the Briffle’s cabin 
and even from the far-off Jones’ clearing pricked up 
their ears and ran like mad to reach Tobijah’s school. 

You may wonder what he had to teach, with only 
nine months of education to his credit. But what he 
knew, he taught. And every day with tedious slowness 
he spelled out a Bible story. And once when he was 
telling of town life in valleys, a little neighbor tarheel 
piped up curiously: “How come we mountain folks is 
all so different from town folks, Tobijah?” 

Tobijah had heard this told in school, and as nigh as 
he could recollect ’twas this way: “Two hundred years 
ago, when America hadn’t been over here from Eng¬ 
land but a short spell, there was folks that got tired of 
living in the lowlands by the sea, so they started west 
in wagons. Some of them got clear west, too, but some 
of them stuck in these here mountains. Why? Well, 
maybe a wagon broke down! I dunno for sure. Or 
maybe somebody fell sick! I dunno. Anyhow, those 
folks that stayed back there by the sea all these two 
hundred years live in big cities now, with a plenty of 
schools and churches and books and Bibles. The folks 
that went clear west in wagons they live in big cities 
now, too, with a plenty of schools and churches and 
books and Bibles. But we mountaineer folks who stuck 
here in these mountains, we’re scattered all over the 
hillsides with nary a neighbor, and nary a school or a 
church or a book or a Bible. Just stayed two hundred 


40 Some Boys and Girls in America 

years plumb behind the times, we have! But now that 
I knows it, ’pears like God says the onliest thing for 
me to do to catch up is to have these reg’lar doings with 
book-learning for you-uns. See ?” 

They saw! And oh, but they longed to catch up with 
those two hundred lost years! In their own peculiar 
way they have been trying ever since. And what 
if Queenofsheba’s first way was making paste to paper 
every inch of their log cabin walls with pages of that 
mammoth mail order catalogue? So that wherever 
your eye looks you can see pictures of engagement 
rings, watches, pianolas, shaving mugs, safety razors, 
baby cribs, plowing machines, china dishes, shoes, hats, 
victrolas and cold cream? 

We dare not laugh at her, for as Ma Tucker said: 
“ ’Pears like I take a heap of comfort mooning over all 
these pictures I never once heard tell of till Tobijah 
went to school! ’Pears like eddicating a boy does a 
heap of good to the hull family! And now Tobijah’s 
plumb set on taking ’Bakuk down to school next fall. 
But the Teacher-Lady says she dunno; where’s the 
money coming from? But Boanerges he’s been pick¬ 
ing berries and toting them down to the cross-roads 
hoping somebody would come along to buy them off 
him, and he’s earned all of seven cents so far! He’s 
the workingest boy! Just think —seven cents! But 
I reckon it may take a speck more than seven cents to 
get ’Bakuk eddicated down at Toby’s school. I dunno. 
But now Solomon says: ‘Ma, ain’t you-uns aiming to 
give me book-larning to be as wise as that Bible Solo¬ 
mon?’ Anyhow, ’taint so powerful lonely up here now 


Oh, That Lonely Tucker Cabin 41 



“1 love thy rocks and rills 
Thy woods and templed hills —” 

Surely you can see from the rocks and rills in this picture what 
a curiously lonely life must be led by Log Cabin families, when 
a hill sits in their front yards and another hill sits in their back 
yards. Yet there are two million of these People-Who-Were- 
Left-Behind-Two-Hundred-Years-Ago (as Tobijah has explained 
to us in the story) living in high nooks and crannies of the 
Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia 
and North Carolina. 

Queenofsheba has evidently been down the hill to fetch a pail 
of water; the rest of the Tuckers are no doubt trying their best 
to plow on some steep hillside without falling several miles down 
into a neighbor’s corn-fields! 







Linsey-woolsey dresses may not be very stylish, but 
they’re very hard to spin and weave and sew by hand 
on winter evenings. 


Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels 43 

with pictures to look at and Toby to spell out Bible 
verses every night. I declare, I dunno just what’s 
made the difference, though!” 

Then little Beth, whose eyes were always roving 
round and round those funny dizzy pictures, pointed 
at the big gold star above the fireplace: “Bethlehem!” 
she murmured, the only word she ever learned to 
speak. But I think it was Ma Tucker’s answer. 


Ill 


EARLY BIRD CATCHES CHRISTMAS 

'C'OR once in her life, Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise 
A really did beat the sunrise; that was because the 
great long-awaited day had come, and there was not a 
moment to lose. Very quietly she nudged Sits-Inside- 
The-Wigwam; he stirred uneasily, then rolled over 
and went to sleep again. She nudged harder; “Heap 
hurry!” she urged, and the excitement in her voice 
somehow penetrated the poor sleepy head. He yawned. 
Stretched. Scrambled softly to his feet. Pattered 
obediently outdoors. (In case you are worrying over 
the fact that he did not seem to spend any time in 
dressing, let me assure you that he was dressed. Com¬ 
pletely. He went to bed that way. He always did; 
it simplifies life a great deal when going to bed means 
flopping down anywhere on the floor, just as you are; 
and when getting up means simply—getting up!) 

The morning was not morning yet—merely a streak 
of pink in the east; Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise shiv¬ 
ered a little from the cold and from excitement, mostly 
from excitement, for it was going to be a really mir¬ 
aculous day. So she darted toward the tree. THE 
tree! It looked exactly as it had looked yesterday, but 
that was almost what she had expected, considering that 
it was barely daylight; although she could not help re¬ 
membering that the thing that had happened to that 
44 


Early Bird Catches Christmas 45 

other tree took place in the night—by morning it was 
entirely new! But she was a patient little soul; she 
would wait. 

Meanwhile Sits-Inside-The-Wigwam stalked behind 
her in a somewhat more sedate fashion, as befits the 
son of a chief who may be a chief himself some day. 
But however slowly he strode along, his eyes were 
glued on the tree ahead. The tree! “The day has 
come, has come, has come!” his footsteps chanted at 
him. “True! true! true!” whispered the leaves as he 
scuffled through them. 

No sooner had he reached the tree, which certainly 
did look exactly as it looked yesterday, than there was 
the patter of other feet and Like-A-Waterfall arrived 
on the scene, puffing heavily, for she was fat! And she 
had hurried. Then came Tinkling Beads, wrapped in 
a bright red blanket; and last of all, Muddy Heels. 
Very solemnly the five of them clasped hands and 
danced round and round the tree in ceremonial fashion, 
waiting—watching— 

The sun came all the way up, very pink and yellow 
and cold. There was a silvery frost over the dry grass 
and over the dead brown leaves; only the pine tree 
looked unadorned, and not at all as mysterious as it 
ought to look with one little, two little, three little, four 
little, five little Injuns dancing round and round and 
round it. They danced, danced, danced, until Like-A- 
Waterfall had no breath left, until Muddy Heels was 
panting, until Sits-Inside-The-Wigwam was cross as 
two sticks. 

“Old pine tree, all the same as ever!” he growled, 


46 Some Boys and Girls in America 

quite as if it were a special discovery of his, whereas 
four other pairs of eyes had noticed the same un¬ 
changed appearance—prim little green needles bristling 
every-which-way just as usual, comical little brown 
cone buttons perching on the pine-tree-tips just as 
usual; yet here were five early risers expecting to see 
something entirely different on those branches. They 
sat down in a circle to watch, all eyes! 

Nothing happened. 

It was dreadfully disappointing. But they kept on 
watching until the pine needles seemed to flicker in a 
blurred sort of way; but nothing happened. 

“Jesus God, He big heap forget!” sighed Bird- 
That-Beats-The-Sunrise, wistfully. 

As for Sits-Inside-The-Wigwam, he grunted that 
he had had his doubts about the whole affair from the 
very beginning; which shows how odious it is to be a 
Superior Person! For in the end it all turned out ex¬ 
actly as Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise had said, and 
certainly her opinions ought to be properly respected 
since she was a much-traveled young lady, for had 
she not had a curious rattling when she breathed ? And 
had she not been sent across the desert to the place 
where the white Man-With-Many-Bottles lived? You 
might suppose that when she came back to her wigwam 
(minus the rattles!) she would brag about her adven¬ 
tures with the contents of those bottles; but no, sick as 
she had been across the desert, she suddenly lost in¬ 
terest in her own woes owing to the marvels of the 
magic tree. 

There never was a tree like it. And surely she was an 


Early Bird Catches Christmas 47 

authority on trees, since in her infancy she was the 
original of “Rock-a-bye-Baby in the Treetop”; for 
every single morning that silent squaw-woman, her 
mother, would bind her round and round into her pa¬ 
poose cradle with soft wrappings of leather, so that 
she could be hung from convenient tree-branches while 
her mother sowed and hoed and reaped and threshed. 
Swinging merrily in treetops, Bird-That-Beats-The- 
Sunrise had laughed intimately with chubby white 
clouds that floated by, had tried to catch the busy 
breezes, had chattered to the squirrels and had learned 
a dozen secret secrets—but never, never, had she seen 
a tree that bloomed with rubber balls and burning can¬ 
dles, silver strings and candy canes, and popcorn. 
. . . Most curious of all, it bloomed on only one day 
in the year. One day! It was absurd! Yet there were 
special ways of knowing that day from other days, 
for there was a certain piece of paper covered with 
black spots,—the spots told you. 

Sits-Inside-The-Wigwam always grinned and grunt¬ 
ed simultaneously when she told this story. Not for 
worlds would he have admitted that he would give any¬ 
thing (yes, even his best bead moccasins) to see such a 
tree. Yet it had been seen, evidently, for here was 
Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise declaring that she had 
seen it with her own eyes and handled it with her own 
hands: hadn’t the white linen nurse who belonged to 
The-Man-With-Bottles actually carried her in her arms 
to the tree? Oh, yes, it did have silver strings and 
burning candles. All the other little patients in that 
hospital across the desert had clapped their hands, and 


48 Some Boys and Girls in America 

those who were well enough danced around it merrily, 
but, sick or well, they had all understood about it; only 
Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise had been ignorant. So 
a chorus of astonished voices explained and explained 
and explained, until you can hardly blame her for get¬ 
ting things slightly mixed afterwards, for Christmas 
is an unbelievably wonderful time to a child who has 
never heard of it before, really a heathen child—yes, 
right here in our own America! 

However, there was the thing called a calendar which 
Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise brought back across the 
desert. She knew exactly how to manage calendars, 
for they had told her that every morning when she got 
up she must mark off a day with a pencil, like this— 
(“Yes, you can keep it! No, no, use this end, dear 
child, the other is a rubber eraser!”) And after eleven 
moons should have waxed and Waned then she would 
reach the special black spots on the calendar that looked 
like this: “25/’ That was the sign that the great day 
had arrived. The tree would bloom. All because it 
was Jesus Christ’s birthday a pine tree always bloomed 
wherever there were children expecting it. Always! 
So every morning Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise had 
been crossing off a date until at last she came to the 
magic “25.” As for the tree, oh, it was unmistakably 
a twin sister to the one across the desert; so she waited. 

Sits-Inside-The-Wigwam waited. 

Like-A-Water fall waited. 

Tinkling Beads waited. 

Muddy Heels waited. 

But nothing happened. 


Early Bird Catches Christmas 49 

The sun climbed up the sky; and it was noon. The 
sun slid down the sky; and it was afternoon. The sun 
sank out of sight; and it was night. Nothing had hap¬ 
pened : the pine tree was as pine-y as ever, but candle¬ 
less, candy-less, ball-less, string-less, popcorn-less 1 
Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise was the most unpopular 
girl on that Indian reservation with one little, two 
little, three little, four little Injuns. 

The two boys, with bloodcurdling warwhoops, said 
that if they only had their grandfather’s tomahawks, 
they would scaaaalp her, ugh! like this! She took to 
her heels and ran! The two girls came flying after, 
shouting that if they had—if they had—if they had— 
well, nothing seemed quite awful enough for a little 
squaw who had deceived them so outrageously, but 
when they caught up with her, let her beware, just let 
her beware! Ugh! Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise took 
to her heels harder than ever and ran straight for her 
wigwam. 

And there, where she least expected to find it, she 
ran into Christmas! 

“Oh!” she gulped, hardly able to believe her eyes as 
The-Man-With-Many-Bottles walked out of her own 
doorway, smiling. 

“Here I am!” he said. “About a year late, but the 
best I could do. As it is, imagine touring the desert 
on Thanksgiving Day. However, I found that I could 
actually be spared all day; so I left my hospital and am 
tagging up my patients. Tell me, how is the old rattle 
that used to spoil your breathing?” 

“Gone!” said Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise, shyly; 


50 Some Boys and Girls in America 

this was all so very unexpected. Then she ventured 
nearer: “Jesus God, He make a big heap forget about 
His tree to-day.” 

The Man-With-Many-Bottles did not understand, of 
course, but by this time four other little Indians had ar¬ 
rived at the wigwam door, breathless. Not too breath¬ 
less, however, to put in a word of explanation now and 
again when Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise did not make 
it clear what a wretchedly disappointing day it had 
been. To clinch the whole matter, they produced the 
precious calendar: see, here was the day—“25” in big 
black spots! 

The Man-With-Many-Bottles hardly knew whether 
to laugh or to cry. “You blessed children,” he cried, 
“you’re one whole moon too early, that’s what’s the 
matter, for Christmas comes next month, not this 
month. As a matter-of-fact, however, to-day is a very 
special time—Thanksgiving Day, when we can thank 
God for all the things He has given us this year. I 
wonder, haven’t you each something special to be 
thankful for?” 

They had not thought much about it, poor dears, 
and as you and I count blessings they had very few— 
but Bird-That-Beats-The-Sunrise was glad she had lost 
that dismal rattle in her chest, Sits-Inside-The-Wig- 
wam was glad there really was going to be a tree to 
bloom, whereupon Tinkling Beads grunted enthusias¬ 
tically (for her!), as did Muddy Heels. Like-A- 
Waterfall was absolutely tongue-tied in the presence of 
this strange gentleman from over the desert, but she, 
too, nodded when the tree was mentioned. 


Early Bird Catches Christmas 51 

The Man-With-Many-Bottles suddenly began wor¬ 
rying about that tree! For surely it was his job to 
make it bloom, yet he lived thirty miles away. But 
what was a little thing like thirty miles when there was 
the bigger, harder distance of a thousand miles from 
the people who might be expected to take an interest in 
one little, two little, three little, four little, five little 
Christmas-less Injuns? He would certainly have to 
write a letter. You need not suppose that he wrote it 
to some Rev. Dr. Smith or to some Mrs. President 
Jones,—no, it was sent to a certain young Master 
Clark and a certain Miss Clark, as follows:— 

On Thanksgiving, in the Evening. 

My Dears: 

I have been seeing things at night! I have been 
seeing the Mayflower plowing sturdily across the 
deep blue sea three-hundred-and-one-years ago to-day; 
I have been seeing our early Pilgrim fathers landing 
on the bleak New England shore; I have been seeing 
the Reception Committee that welcomed them—Mas- 
sasoit, Squanto and Samoset. I think you already 
know these early stories of the Indian friends and ene¬ 
mies which the white man made, but do you realize 
quite how selfishly the white man fought to grab the 
red man's country from him, until to-day he is dispos¬ 
sessed of his most fertile lands and Uncle Sam says to 
him: “You are my ward; come, live peaceably on this 
special Indian territory; you cannot hunt for game any 
more, but you can dig and plow for a living.” So he 
herded all of the Indians on reservations. Some of 


52 Some Boys and Girls in America 

them were dry and arid plains,—deserts, where the 
most progressive of farmers could not earn a living! 

Now that I have come to one of these deserts my¬ 
self, no wonder I have been seeing things at night! I 
have been seeing these red men who used to be such 
fierce and fearless fighters, three hundred years ago, 
sitting tamely by their wigwam doors in idleness,—the 
art of hunting, lost; the art of plowing, hated. I have 
been seeing sacred sticks called “gods”; I have been 
seeing weird carved idols daubed with paint and wor¬ 
shiped earnestly; I have been seeing frightful heathen 
dances held in honor of the sun god—disgraceful or¬ 
gies that no Christian man can watch, unashamed; I 
have been seeing such heathen superstition as you would 
not think could possibly exist in our own America; I 
have been seeing ignorance as black as that in darkest 
Africa. When I first combed and curried my good 
little Indian pony, an old brave threw stones at me in 
bitter protest, he was so enraged at such a foolish (?) 
habit. They call me The-Man-With-Many-Bottles 
now, approvingly; but time was when the pills in my 
bottles were supposed to be enchanted, and a wise In¬ 
dian would creep secretly at nightfall to empty them 
over some cliff rather than swallow a white man's 
magic! 

You know, it really seems to me that after three 
hundred years our grandfathers and you and I really 
ought to have done better for these ignorant red men— 
there are only a mere 336,000 of them altogether, 
which isn’t so many! Yet Uncle Sam has only taught 
75,000 how to read and write, and only a little over a 


Bloom, Little Tree! 


53 



What a very upsetting experience it must have been for One 
little, Two little, Three little, Four little Injuns to stand around 
waiting for their Christmas Tree to bloom with presents! You 
can see for yourself that the Fifth Fat Little Injun has entirely 
given up hope. Yet it wasn’t the fault of the tree, you know. 








Wouldn’t you like to send a Merry Christmas to 
dozens of little papooses who are busy at present being 
Rockabye-Babies-in-the-T reetops ? 




Early Bird Catches Christmas 55 

hundred thousand of them are Christians, with thou¬ 
sands who never once heard even the name of Jesus. 

But just now, the thing I am especially seeing at 
night is one little, two little, three little, four little, five 
little Christmas-less Injuns! Can you imagine their 
spending Thanksgiving Day around a certain pine tree 
patiently expecting it to blossom forth with candles, 
candy sticks and tinsel strings? (A whole month 
ahead of time, too!) Christmas is coming, however, 
just thirty days off, and how dare I disappoint the five 
of them again? Five little Indians with their first 
fond belief in the Jesus-God! 

I need a volunteer Santa Claus to send little pads of 
paper, colored pencils, safety pins, rubber balls, hard 
candies, dolls and toys of every kind, so that that little 
pine tree really can burst out with Christmas radiance 
on December twenty-fifth. 

So if you advertise for St. Nick’s partners, and if 
they do their duty by me right away, then I begin to 
see new things at night—I see Big Chief Iron Arm 
handling the Christmas tree gifts in a dazed, puzzled 
fashion; I see old Squaw Straight-As-An-Arrow ask¬ 
ing questions of her beaming grandchildren; I see a 
busy missionary forced to cross that desert once a week 
to tell new Jesus stories; I see Big Chief Iron Arm 
addressing all his tribe, suggesting that a church be 
built; I see solemn Indians nod their heads approv¬ 
ingly; I see cobblestones laid row on row and tier on 
tier, capped by a roof of new-sawn timbers, with a 
sturdy tower in front—their church! I see the congre r 
gation gathering early every Sunday morning; one by 







56 Some Boys and Girls in America 

one I see each wooden stick called “god” made into 
kindling wood; I see the carved and painted idols 
chopped up for fuel; I see cleaner homes, and wiser 
people reading books: I see another tribe made Chris¬ 
tian. And all because one little, two little, three lit¬ 
tle, four little, five little Injuns had the Christmas tree 
which they knew the Saviour would send them! Let 
me remind you that 

“Christ has no hands but our hands 
To do His work to-day; 

He has no feet but our feet 
To lead men in His way; 

He has no tongues but our tongues 
To tell men how He died; 

He has no help but our help, 

To bring them to His side ” 

The young Clarks told (very hopefully your friend, 
The-Man-With-The-Bottles) their friends, and I tell 
you, for although this all happened several years ago, 
another Christmas Day is coming and another tribe of 
Indians is already wondering . . . watching . . . 
waiting. . . . 


IV 


BIG CHIEF LIKE-THUNDER-ON-THE-MOUNTAIN 
GIVES THANKS 



LL day long for almost a week Big Chief Like- 


x x Thunder-On-The-Mountain sat in the shade of 
his tepee making something. And this was very as¬ 
tonishing! Not that he should be sitting. For sitting, 
as you must now hear, is an art in which Indians can 
excel beyond almost any other people. But that Big 
Chief Like-Thunder-On-The-Mountain should be 
making something, working with his hands—oh, this 
was indeed surprising. For the whole tribe acknowl¬ 
edged that a man who was a great chief, whose shoul¬ 
ders were now bent by many winters, and whose 
cheeks were wrinkled by many summers, had a perfect 
right to bask in idleness forever and ever. Yet here 
he was with a little knife and a piece of wood, whit¬ 
tling something all day. But to neither man, woman 
nor child would he show the thing that he was whit¬ 


tling. 


Many an Indian questioned Big Chief’s squaw as 
she weeded his vegetable patch: “Moon-Over-The- 
Desert,” they whispered softly in her ear, “what is the 
use of living in the same tepee with the Big Chief if 
your eyes cannot see the thing he whittles with his 


knife?” 


“Poof!” grunted Moon-Over-The-Desert, shrug- 


57 


58 Some Boys and Girls in America 

ging her shoulders. “What good does looking do? 
You should see poor Moon-Over-The-Desert craning 
her neck and stooping her back and straining her eyes, 
but always Big Chief’s hand covers the thing he carves. 
But this is what it seems like: like some great medi¬ 
cine to help the tribe! What else should it be—so 
precious to him?” 

“Oh!” the Indians nodded, “Moon-Over-The-Desert 
thinks it may be some new god—” 

“Perhaps!” she said. And you can’t blame her for 
thinking this, since Big Chief certainly seemed to wor¬ 
ship the little thing he was carving exactly as the whole 
tribe worshiped the wooden gods—those queer carved 
bits of wood, brightly painted, to protect the tribe 
from evil. 

But on the day the whittling was finished you can 
imagine the mingled terror and pride of two young 
Indian boys, Brave Heart and Strong Legs, whom Big 
Chief Like-Thunder-On-The-Mountain summoned to 
his tepee. Poor Brave Heart’s heart was flopping fas¬ 
ter than any Indian’s heart should flop, and Strong 
Legs’ legs were wobbling more than any Indian’s legs 
should wobble. Yet there they stood, the two of them, 
as straight as arrows, while the old chief peered out 
from under his beetling brows—and it is a fact that his 
eyes seemed to pierce straight through them. 

“Brave Heart,” said he, “and you, Strong Legs, as 
time flies, twelve years have you lived in the tepee of 
your fathers and played childishly at the edge of the 
desert, until now the time has come for you to prove 
yourselves men. Full well you know the Indian cus- 


59 


Big Chief Gives Thanks 

tom, to send you out alone into the lonely wilds to 
suffer ordeals and testings, to starve and to be tortured 
until into your frenzied minds strange visions from the 
Great Spirit may come. No doubt you have already 
both dreaded these coming ordeals, yet welcomed their 
approach, wanting to be proven even as brave and as 
strong as the names you bear. Is this not true?” 

Brave Heart nodded his head and Strong Legs mum¬ 
bled that he did feel just that way. 

“Very well, then,” continued Big Chief Like-Thun- 
der-On-The-Mountain, “I now lay an ordeal on the 
two of you. But it is neither by fire nor by torture that 
you are to conquer. See, in my hand is something I 
have been carving many days from a piece of wood. 
Look at it well—then tell me what it seems to be.” 

Eagerly the two boys leaned near and examined the 
carving which had been arousing such curiosity on the 
reservation. A little square thing it was, with some¬ 
thing jutting from the top. 

“Strong Legs, he thinks maybe it is a new tribal god 
or powerful medicine to protect us,” said the first boy, 
merely voicing the opinion of the entire village, of 
course. 

But Brave Heart saw the Big Chief shake his head, 
and when his turn came he said: “To Brave Heart 
the carving looks like the stone tepees of the pale-face 
tribe of men; only the thing that juts out from the top 
of the tepee is something which Brave Heart never saw 
before.” 

Big Chief grunted approvingly: “You have spoken 
well, Brave Heart, and now I will tell you my wish. 





60 Some Boys and Girls in America 

Far across the desert from here there is a village where 
long years ago there was an Indian pow-wow and sun 
dance to which all the braves of our tribe went. And 
as if it happened only yesterday there is the surprising 
memory that half the Indians in that village refused 
to take peyote or dance in the sun dance as they used 
to do, because they had begun to 'walk the Jesus-Road / 
Doubt not that instantly there was great curiosity in 
the heart of Chief Thunder-On-The-Mountain regard¬ 
ing this Jesus-Road, and he asked many questions and 
heard many answers and saw many sights. But the 
sight he remembers best after all these years is the 
cobblestone tepee where the Indians met to walk this 
Jesus-Road together and to sing songs and to hold 
their peaceful pow-wows. So now here is that tepee 
carved in wood exactly as Big Chief remembers it. 
Take it, brave boys, so that you may recognize it when 
you go over the desert to find this village. And when 
once you get there show this carving to the Pale-Face- 
Man from the tribe of white men who lives in that vil¬ 
lage to teach those Indians to walk the Jesus-Road. 
Tell him that after all these many years poor Old Chief 
Thunder-On-The-Mountain is still waiting for a Pale- 
Face-Teacher to come to teach his tribe about the 
Jesus-Road. Tell him that during all these weary 
years of waiting the cheeks of Big Chief have become 
wrinkled and his back has become bent, and his eyes 
have become dim, and his legs have become feeble, until 
if he waits much longer to walk this Jesus-Road he 
will have to be carried like some helpless little papoose 
upon the backs of strong young braves. Ask this 


The Big Chief’s Tepee 


61 



It was after his two little new braves had brought Bibles across 
the desert that Big Chief Like-Thunder-on-the-Mountain learned 
to say the Twenty-third Psalm in the Indian sign language: 

“The Great Father above is a Shepherd Chief. I am His, and with Him 
I want not. 

“He throws out to me a rope, and the name of the rope is Love, and He 

draws me, and He draws me, and He draws me to where the grass is 

green and th 4 water not dangerous, and I eat and lie down satisfied. 

“Sometimes my heart is very weak and falls down, but He lifts it up 
again and draws me into a good road. His name is IVonderful. 

“Some time, it may be very soon, it may be longer, it may be a long, 
long time, He will draw me into a place between mountains. It is dark 
there, but I'll draw back not. I’ll be afraid not, for it is in there be - 

tween these mountains that the Shepherd Chief will meet me, and the hun¬ 

ger I have felt in my heart all through this life will be satisfied. Sometimes 
He makes the love rope into a whip, but afterwards He gives me a staff to 
lean on. 

“He spreads a table before me with all kinds of food. He puts His hand 
upon my head, and all the ‘tired’ is gone. My cup He tills till it runs over. 

“What I tell you is true, I lie not. These roads that are ‘away ahead ' 
will stay with me through this life, and afterzvard I will go to live in the 
‘Dig Tepee’ and sit down with the Shepherd Chief forever.” 









A wooden god like this isn’t good enough for any boy 
or girl growing up in America, is it? 






63 


Big Chief Gives Thanks 

Pale-Face-Teacher if that other tribe of Indians is the 
only one that needs to learn to walk the Jesus-Road, 
while all the rest of us grow up and die in ignorance. 
All this, remember! And tell him that your ordeal of 
manhood is to bring him back to us. Now go! And 
until you find this village-of-the-stone-tepee and give 
your message, you shall not eat nor drink.” 

So over the desert they went, the two of them. And 
they neither ate nor drank until they found a village 
with a stone tepee and a tower jutting out on top of it. 
Very weak from lack of food and water, they sought 
the Pale-Face-Teacher in the mission house, and show¬ 
ing him the carving of that mission they gave their 
message. 

You may be sure that even as the Apostle Paul once 
heard a voice calling, “Come over into Macedonia and 
help us,” so to that missionary the small carved object 
was as a voice calling: “Come over the desert into our 
tribe and help us.” You may also be sure that he 
went! 

Moreover, the Christians in that cobblestone mission 
church which he left behind him raised enough money 
to buy Bibles to teach their Christ-less neighbors how 
to walk the Jesus-Road. So that when Brave Heart 
and Strong Legs went back over the desert they car¬ 
ried those Bibles with them, traveling beside the mis¬ 
sionary. 

And Big Chief Like-Thunder-On-The-Mountain, sit¬ 
ting in the shade of his tepee, saw the three of them 
approaching and called to his squaw: Moon-Over- 
The-Desert! Stop grinding the corn, old woman, and 


64 Some Boys and Girls in America 

go tell every squaw and every brave in all this tribe 
that a Pale-Face-Teacher comes across the plain to 
teach them how to walk the Jesus-Road. Hurry!” 

So Moon-Over-The-Desert stopped grinding the 
corn to spread the message through the village. And 
Big Chief Like-Thunder-On-The-Mountain gave 
thanks that he who had hungered and thirsted for 
righteousness was about to be filled. 


V 


FINIS AND THE FEBRUARY FACE 

“You have a February face, 

So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness.” 

—William Shakespeare. 

T^INIS had thirteen mothers. And that is enough 
A to give anybody a February Face, especially as 
twelve-and-a-half of those mothers were boys, and the 
other half was really a boy, too, only it belonged to 
Ignacy, which meant that from the nose downward 
his mouth and chin and jaws were “boy,” but from the 
nose up . . . oh, from the nose up, Ignacy's eyes, Ig¬ 
nacy's ears and Ignacy's brain were all “mother.” He 
had not known about that half of himself until Finis 
came along. 

Said Mrs. Lapczynska next door: “Sooner I hears 
how Mrs. Marchlewicz has got a daughter, I makes me 
a remark on my husband as how the surprise of it 
could to kill her mit joy. Und sooner I makes that 
remark, sooner Mrs. Marchlewicz she up and dies, 
poor woman! So over I goes und I makes me a re¬ 
mark on them sons: “You poor kids ain't go no mud- 
der no more. Und you ain't got no grammudder. 
Und you ain't got no aunties. But you got me! So 
sooner you thirteen kids steps along to the sink, I 
65 


66 Some Boys and Girls in America 

puts me right arm into scrubbing you up real clean for 
the funeral, see? So step along lively now!” 

Twelve-and-a-half of the boys began to “step along 
lively” toward the sink to be scrubbed and soaped and 
scoured within an inch of their lives, but it was then 
that the top half of Ignacy woke into maternal con¬ 
sciousness. 

“Mudder learned us how to scrub our own selves,” 
he said with gentle dignity—and instantly the other 
twelve boys nodded their heads and echoed him in a 
chorus: “Yah! Mudder learned us how to scrub our 
own selves.” 

So in spite of her willing right arm and her friendly 
intentions, Mrs. Lapczynska was forced to walk home 
wagging her head and announcing to the neighbor¬ 
hood : “You should see what you should see! Thirteen 
boys at their mudder’s funeral mit dirty faces— 
yah!” 

But they were not dirty. Terrible things had hap¬ 
pened to them at the hands of Ignacy; but at least they 
had happened in the secrecy of the Marchlewicz kitchen, 
and at least no alien hands had soaped those faces until 
they shone like polished apples at a fruit stall. 

‘‘Sooner we lets one neighbor-womens into this 
kitchen, sooner we lets the whole bunch of neighbor- 
womens into this kitchen, see?” Ignacy would say 
fiercely at intervals all during the tedious scrubbing, 
when the boys were crying, half from grief because 
Mudder was gone and half from pain at the scouring. 
But the neighborhood had to admit that thirteen boys 
with sober shining faces were an ornament to the 


Finis and the February Face 67 

funeral. Everybody cried to see them sitting there, so 
awed and solemn and forlorn. So awkward and 
clumsy and wretched. 

“Those poor kids!” sobbed the neighbor-women af¬ 
terwards. “Who’s going to know them apart now 
their mudder is gone?” 

“Yah!” said Mrs. Lapczynska. “Who’s going to 
know them apart?” 

“Und who’s going to cook them their meals ?” 

“Who’s going to wash them their clothes ?” 

“Und who’s going to patch them their holes ?” 

“Who’s going to sweep them their house?” 

“Who’s going to clean them their dishes ?” 

Oh, it was something to talk about over back fences 
—this Marchlewicz family. But the most anxious 
question of all was about the little new baby: what 
would become of that motherless infant? 

“It vill up und die !” said Mrs. Lapczynska. 

“Sure, up und die!” everybody agreed, so that it 
really was all settled in their own minds in no time at 
all. But they were reckoning without Ignacy, he who 
had suddenly become a mother in the twinkling of an 
eye. 

Ignacy had no least intention of letting the baby up 
and die. He knew more about babies than you might 
suppose, for he was number five in the Marchlewicz 
family and had seen plenty of small brothers suck pla¬ 
cidly on milk bottles until in due time they grew big 
enough to roll around on the kitchen floor. Well, 
what he had seen brothers do, surely one sister could 
also do! He never wasted a moment of worry over 




68 Some Boys and Girls in America 

baths or bottles or blankets or draughts; he merely grew 
a trifle anxious over a suitable name. 

“I tink we should get us a real American name,” 
said he, for in a family bristling with a Sigismund, a 
Henryk, a Josef, a Ursin, a Jan, etc., he felt that the 
old country was well enough represented. The little 
sister should be American through and through if they 
had their way about it, as evidently they would, for now 
is the time to tell you that Papa Marchlewicz spent 
most of his life down underneath America in a great 
black coal mine. When he was hoisted up to the sur¬ 
face at the end of a day's work, he went straight to the 
house of an old crony who kept strong drink in bot¬ 
tles : he loved those bottles so devotedly that it meant 
little to Papa Marchlewicz whether there were brand 
new babies at his house. . . . 

So in the course of time they named her “Finis." 
Henryk was the family scholar, and he said that at the 
end of all really important books you found the word 
“Finis." It was dreadfully American! 

“But what does it mean?" asked Ignacy anxiously. 
For it was all very well for Henryk to spring a schol¬ 
arly name on the baby, but Henryk was the least 
motherly of all the thirteen mothers: he would think 
that anything out of a book would be fine for a baby 
—anything would not be fine! “Appendix," for in¬ 
stance. That was in all important books, too, but 
when Henryk suggested it, Ignacy made a few in¬ 
quiries and discovered that it might be all right in 
books, but the minute it got into a person you had to 
rush them to the hospital in ambulances to have it cut 


Finis and the February Face 69 

out! So if Finis was going to be any such dangerous 
name as that— 

It was not. It was entirely safe and appropriate. 
“It just means ‘That’s-all-for-now’ or ‘No more to 
this book’ or ‘This is the end/ explained Henryk, “und 
she’s the end of our family, ain’t she?” 

“Yah, I tink that vill be one very nice name for our 
bebee,” said Ignacy, rocking our bebee in his arms con¬ 
tentedly, while Ursin cooked stew in a pot for supper. 

So “Finis” the baby became, although since her 
thirteen mothers all pronounced it Fine-ice, you will 
probably prefer to call her that yourself. 

It was a curious life that Finis led. There would 
be long and lonely hours at a stretch when not a single 
mother would be on hand—that was because Henryk 
was in school, Sigismund was apprenticed to the gro¬ 
cer, Jan was down in the coal mine leading the old 
blind donkey which drew the little coal cars, Josef was 
picking over coal in the “yards,” Ursin was in a silk 
factory, Ignacy was doing odd jobs about town, for 
every Marchlewicz worked in one way or another. 
Then there would be other hours when Finis would 
have almost too much attention—mothers to right of 
her, mothers to left of her volleyed and thundered! 

“Anybody seen the milk bottle of the bebee Fine- 
ice?” 

Nobody had! But there would be a grand scramble 
of mothers looking under the bed, under the table, 
under the chairs, until after a breathless Hide-The- 
Thimble search, the bottle would be discovered under 
the stove, rolled way back out of sight. 


70 Some Boys and Girls in America 

“Just you make a good wash of it!” ordered Ignacy 
sternly. 

But the twelve other mothers looked at him in dis¬ 
gust: “Aw, Ignacy! Make a good wash on it— not! 
Ain’t it been full mit milk?” 

‘‘Yah, und ain’t it going to be full mit more milk?” 

“Und ain’t milk water? It don’t need no more 
washes on it, Ignacy!” 

“It’s a awful nice bottles now, Ignacy, a real nice 
clean bottles!” 

But Ignacy knew. His big eyes grew dreamy: 
“Mudder, she always made a special big clean wash¬ 
ings of bottles for bebees. You got to handle gentle 
mit bebees—they ain’t so tough. They could to die 
awful easy! They could get appendixes in their stum- 
micks! They could to yell all night, mit a whole 
bunch of neighbor-womens walking into the house 
und bossing us mit big voices! You like? No? Veil, 
that’s why you should to make that clean wash—see?” 

Oh yes, it was suddenly as plain as day—those offi¬ 
cious neighbor-women mustn’t get their noses inside 
that door! Every mother dashed instantly to the sink, 
Sigismund screaming: “Me first! Lemme make that 
wash!” 

Then there was a wild battle—twenty-four fists and 
twenty-four arms and twenty-four feet kicking, pok¬ 
ing, nudging, pummeling. 

“Ain’t I found that bottles under the stoves? Veil, 
just you lemme make that washings, Sigismund March- 
lewicz!” 

“You might to crack it, Ursin. You ain’t so gentle 


Finis and the February Face 71 

mit bottles. Bottles mit cracks ain't healthy for 
bebees!" 

And all this time Finis lay on her back while her 
poor February Face looked bleak and hungry and puz¬ 
zled: What was going on? These roaring voices! 
These funny affectionate beings who came galloping 
indoors and nuzzled their cold noses down into her 
soft warm neck whispering: “Schmile, bebee, schmile 
one leetle schmile! Mine own leetle, schweet leetle 
bebee l” 

Who were they—these noisy persons who loved her 
nearly to death when they arrived and neglected her 
nearly to death when they were gone? It was entirely 
too much to have thirteen mothers! If it had not been 
for Ignacy ... oh, but there was Ignacy, who even 
remembered to warm his nose before snuggling it 
down for a kiss, who insisted on daily baths and clean 
bottles, and who dandled her on his knees like some 
solemn old grandfather trying his awkward best to be 
a mother. 

It was Ignacy who made lists of the things Finis 
must be and do and possess. Among the latest of these: 
“Girls ain't boys," he announced. “Girls is different. 
They got to have curls." 

“But there ain’t no curls on Fine-ice," the twelve 
other mothers objected gloomily. 

Ignacy gave them a withering glance: You should 
to make me laugh! Ain’t there curl papers ?" 

But this was beyond boy-mothers: they had no idea 
“what?" or “how?" or “why?" until Ignacy proceeded 
to show them the what and the how and the why with 


72 Some Boys and Girls in America 

screwed-up strips of newspapers. Curls, however, 
were not popular with Finis! Her face puckered up 
into a more February aspect than usual as the tweak¬ 
ing and twisting continued, until finally her roars of 
rage halted Ignacy midway— 

“ ’Sh! bebee, ’sh! It ain’t stylish you should have 
curls on only half your hairs, bebee. ’Sh! ’Sh! Lemme 
fix the other hairs, sweetheart. Ain’t you wanting to 
look one pritty, schwell, leetle bebee? Just you lie 
still, mine pet! ’Sh! ’Sh!” 

But neither style nor persuasion had any effect; 
Finis would not submit to further torture. So the 
next morning when the few curl papers came off, one- 
half of her head was frizzled like a Fiji-Islander’s, 
while the other half was straight and soft and limp. 

Ignacy was very much distressed about it: “Sooner 
Sunday comes, we should to have our girl bebee fixed 
up special; ain’t you ever took notice of the other girls 
on the street?” 

They had not. But all twelve of them dashed in¬ 
stantly to the front window to see the sights that 
might be seen; and there was the detestable Sophy 
Lapczynska parading by in unbelievable splendor— 

“Mit curls!” 

“Mit hair ribbons on her hairs!” 

“Mit sashes around her middle!” 

“Mit a ring-from-gold on her fingers!” 

Ignacy nodded viciously: “She ain’t so schwell, 
that Sophy! Our girl should to be more schweller 
than her; yah?” 

“Yah!” roared Sigismund. 


Finis and the February Face 73 

“Yah!” roared Ursin. 

“Yah!” roared Jan, until one by one eleven of the 
mothers had voiced their determination not to let Sophy 
Lapczynska outdo their beautiful beloved baby. But 
the twelfth mother was Henryk, and Henryk was not 
emotional: “Why for should Fine-ice be so special 
schwell sooner Sunday comes ?” he asked in his sensible 
practical way. 

Ignacy gulped and was speechless for half a second, 
but although he had no least idea why Sunday was a 
special time, wild horses could not have made him ad¬ 
mit his ignorance: “Ain’t I said it once—how girls is 
different? Sooner Sunday comes, they puts them on 
fine specials—und walks them down the street to a 
special place.” 

“Und what for should be that special Sunday place ?” 
asked Henryk, the Thorough. 

Ignacy looked at him pityingly: “For shame you 
ask me another question, Henryk Marchlewicz! Ain’t 
you got two foots? Ain’t you got two eyes? Veil, 
go walking mit those foots und go looking mit those 
eyes.” 

“Und that I vill!” vowed Henryk, hurrying out of 
the door after the grand and glorious Sophy. But at 
the sight of one boy-mother scurrying down the street, 
the other twelve came rushing pell-mell at his heels, so 
that when Miss Sophy Lapczynska entered her “special 
Sunday place,” she was closely shadowed by the 
Marchlewicz detectives. 

“An awful cheap leetle place,” sniffed Henryk dis¬ 
dainfully. “My schoolhouse mit bells und fences und 


74 Some Boys and Girls in America 

windows could to be many thousand times more 
bigger!” 

“Und my silk factory could to be many hundred 
thousand times more bigger than your old school!” 
boasted Ursin. 

Whereat, Josef grew dramatic and waved his arms 
toward the sun: “Sooner you talks of bigness, ain’t 
nothing more bigger than my coal-breaker jutting 
smack up into the sky!” 

So a battle of words was being waged on the thresh¬ 
old of Sophy’s special Sunday place until suddenly 
a certain sound drowned out their squabblings—sing¬ 
ing- 

011, they loved singing! With the boastful words 
only half said, they stood with parted lips listening to 
the music which Sophy Lapczynska was making in¬ 
doors,—Sophy and those other little girls with Sunday 
sashes round their middles and Sunday ribbons on their 
hairs. This, then, was the thing Finis must be dressed 
up for: she was to join these singers. 

“I got a awful glad over that singing!” smiled Ig¬ 
nacy, for already he seemed to hear his toothless little 
Finis warbling sweeter than anybody else. 

Even Henryk approved: “I tink singings could be 
very proper for American girls.” 

“Sure! Singings, mit curls und sashes und rings- 
from-gold,” said Sigismund with a sentimental break 
in his voice as he pictured his little Finis out-doing the 
unspeakable Sophy Lapczynska. 

And then the impossible happened. She appeared. 



Finis and the February Face 75 

“Come on in!” She said. “It’s for everybody, you 
know.” 

“Yah!” grunted Ursin gloomily. “I got a grand 
sash tied round my middle! That ain’t no place for 
me!” 

“Nor me!” said Sigismund. “Nor me!” “Nor 
me!” “Nor me!” the others echoed, mentioning curls 
and ribbons and rings-from-gold. 

But She would have none of it. “Nonsense! Do I 
look like a lady who has to have sashes and curls and 
rings-from-gold? I dare you to come in!” 

Well! ! ! 

They tropped in very sheepishly and bashfully and 
noisily. Sophy Lapczynska giggled (she was that 
kind!), but the wonderful Lady gave Sophy one look: 
Sophy grew brick red from the center of her cheeks 
clear around to her Sunday hair-ribbons. Then thir¬ 
teen chairs were found for the thirteen newcomers. 
There was more singing. Then everybody shut his or 
her eyes and the Wonderful Lady closed hers while 
she talked out loud. 

“But who’s she talking at?” asked Henryk, The 
Practical. 

“ ’Sh!” said a gentleman. 

It was all very mystifying. But even then, before 
he knew what was really happening, Ignacy said he had 
marbles in his throat over the “Leddy talking mit her 
eyes shut. I got a awful glad over her!” 

Then came more singing, with Ignacy out-doing 
everybody else: he did not know the words, but that 







76 Some Boys and Girls in America 

made no difference—he let his voice out, as if he were 
calling clear down the street; he gathered his voice in, 
until it was the gentlest coo, the kind he used to put 
Finis to sleep. He adored singing. But the other 
twelve Marchlewiczes sat tongue-tied and uneasy until 
She came to sit beside them. 

“I hope you will join our Sunday School/’ She said. 

“Sunday School?” they echoed. “What for should 
it be?” 

“Did you never hear of a Sunday School before?” 
She asked, scandalized. 

Thirteen heads nodded “no.” 

“Oh!” sighed the Wonderful Lady. “Did you ever 
see a Bible?” 

“No!” the heads wagged. (And the lady remerm 
bered reading that six million Americans had no 
Bibles yet. Here were thirteen of those six millions.) 

“Did you ever hear of Jesus?” 

Nobody was quite sure: Henryk said that when 
Papa Marchlewicz got swearing mad, Leddy, he said 
that name, but was it the one she meant ? 

“I fear it is,” She sighed, “although only wicked lips 
use the name of the Lord Jesus in ways like that. Let 
me tell you about Him.” 

They listened. . . . 

They had never heard one word of it before. They 
were very much annoyed by a bell that tinkled long be¬ 
fore she was through, so Henryk said: “You 
shouldn’t to mind bells, Leddy, just spiel ahead!” 

But the lady had to mind the bell; and in no time at 
all Sunday School was over. 


Finis and the February Face 77 

“Did you like it?” She asked eagerly. 

“I got a awful glad over it!” said Ignacy, with his 
quaint wide smile. 

Even Henryk was interested: “Why for shouldn't 
we got news of this Jesus before, Leddy? Ain’t He 
new in town?” 

“I am afraid He is!” She sighed. “You see, the 
people in my city suddenly began thinking about the 
boys and girls in this Coal Town of yours. They said 
to me: ‘You go and live in a little house, and have 
Sunday School on Sundays and other nice things on 
Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and so forth.’ So 
here I am! And this is my little house. ‘Coal Town 
Christian Center’ is its name, and you can come to see 
me any time at all. Come, if you smash your finger! 
Come, if you want to play! Come, if you’re lonely all 
up-and-down inside you, although you don’t look as if 
you could ever be lonely—are you all brothers?” 

“Sure! And you should see our girl!” boasted 
Ignacy. 

“I should love to see your girl!” the lady smiled. 
“Why can’t I come home with you now?” 

So like knights of old escorting Ye Princesse Faire, 
they led her through those ugly streets. “You should to 
step careful here, Leddy, there is puddles!” 

Such a puddle! Like ink. The lady picked her way 
daintily around it. She looked at the small shanty- 
houses dingy from showers of soot forever belching 
out of the factory chimneys; she looked at people’s 
front yards littered with tin cans and garbage and cin¬ 
ders; she looked at the trees which the soot and the 


78 Some Boys and Girls in America 

cinders had robbed of their leaves; she looked at the 
hills and hummocks of coal piled up, waiting to be 
shipped to your furnace and mine. 

“What a hideous place Coal Town is!” she said to 
herself; then to the boys: “Is your father a miner?” 

“Sure! Und you should to see the cage they lets him 
down in, Leddy. A awful big cage, mit lots of other 
mens. But Popper ain’t so scart; he goes down most 
to the middle of America. We walks around on top 
of him all day!” 

“It’s awful dark down there, Leddy.” 

“It’s like cities down there, Leddy, mit streets-from- 
coal, mit avenues-from-coal, mit leetle rooms-from- 
coal.” 

“Popper whacks at them coal walls all day.” 

“When Popper comes up on top of America once 
more, he just drinks und drinks und drinks.” 

The lady sighed: “Tell me about your mother.” 

“Mudder, she got dead, Leddy. Sooner Fine-ice was 
born, see?” 

“Fine-ice? Is that your little sister? Who takes 
care of her, then?” 

“You shouldn’t to waste pities on Fine-ice, ma’am!” 
said Ignacy, earnestly. “We takes awful good care of 
her; we shouldn’t to let no neighbor-womens get in¬ 
side the house!” 

“Let’s hurry!” cried the lady. 

“But she ain’t so special, like she should to be to¬ 
day,” sighed Ignacy. “She got a Sunday curl on one 
side of her hairs but she’s awful schweet leetle bebee.” 


Susie’s Special Sunday Place 


79 



Here are half a dozen of the thirteen mothers going into 
Susie’s Special Sunday Place. The minute you have counted to 
be sure that there are really six, then please run down into your 
cellar and look at the coal, so that you can remember how Papa 
Marchlewicz got it for you down underneath America in his black 
Coal town—banging away for dear life at the walls. Surely you 
will be glad that you can keep this Christian Center open as one 
means of saying “Thank You” to the coal families. 









This cradle was easy to draw, but a February Face 
proved really quite difficult! However, by making poor 
Finis open her mouth in a tremendous howl we think 
we succeeded rather well. 



Finis and the February Face 81 

“You bet!” said Sigismund vigorously, “one awful 
schwell leetle kid!” 

When they came indoors, the Wonderful Lady 
gathered Finis up into her arms. She gave one look at 
that half-curled, half straight hair and at that cloudy 
February Face; then she buried her own face in the 
soft little neck. “Oh, dear Friend of Little Children,” 
she prayed, “help me! Help me! And bless this poor 
starved little baby.” 

Finis loved it. 

It was not like her thirteen mothers. It was not 
boisterous. It did not volley and thunder. It knew 
exactly how to hold babies! Finis smiled, and the 
February Face became May—another minute, and it 
became June . . . 

The thirteen mothers smiled vainly. 

“She should to get a mash on you!” they boasted. 
“Ain’t she the schwell bebee?” 

“Oh, yes! Yes! And I have the grandest news for 
you, for in my little house I have some cribs. The 
cribs are called a ‘Day Nursery.’ Babies will lie in 
them all day long while families are away working. 
For babies get lonely when nobody is home to nurse 
them. Babies get hungry. Babies get thin. The rose¬ 
buds fade from their faces.” 

The thirteen mothers peered anxiously at Finis: 
“Should she have got rosebuds?” asked Ignacy. 

“She should!” sighed the Wonderful Lady. “I 
will put them there. You watch!” 

So they watched. And it happened. For only 
twelve months later when they had a ‘Better Babies’ 


82 Some Boys and Girls in America 

Contest in that town, it was Finis Marchlewicz who 
won the blue ribbon! Finis, fairer and fatter than you 
would have believed possible. 

“Just see that baby’s face!” chuckled the jolly 
judges, feeling jollier than ever when Finis smiled at 
them. “Whatever makes any baby in this gloomy 
Coal Town beam like that?” 

Ignacy climbed up on their little platform, tiptoed 
behind th,e table with their weighing baskets on it, and 
whispered into their ears: “Sooner the Leddy brang 
Jesus on this town, it made a special glad for kids, 


VI 

BANANA BEPPO’s GO-CART 


B ANANA BEPPO had a go-cart. But of course 
nobody ever saw him go in it, himself; every 
morning he loaded it down with piles and piles of yel¬ 
low bananas, and pushed it through the streets all day 
shouting musically: “Banan’l Nice fresh-a banan’l 
Anybod-a want-a de nice fresh-a banan’ ?” 

I dare say you may have seen him yourself going 
past your own front door; you would surely recognize 
him because of his dark smiling face, his jet black hair 
and snapping brown eyes. He wears a red handker¬ 
chief knotted loosely around his neck, and in one ear 
dangles the tiny loop of a little gold earring; nobody 
knows quite why—all he can tell you is that when he 
was a very little boy in Italy his mother put it in his 
ear. It had something to do with her fear of ‘‘evil 
eye/’ he says, and it has stayed there ever since! 

Now, in the summer, as you very well know, the sun 
is hot, and a go-cart full of bananas gets heavier and 
heavier when you have been pushing it through sunny 
streets, with automobiles unpleasantly dashing by, 
much too close to the wheels of the slow-poke push¬ 
cart. How Banana Beppo hated them—he used to 
shake his brown fist and reel off the most remarkable 
string of Italian words that sounded exactly like 
“Zzzzzzrrrrr!” I don’t know myself what they 
83 


84 Some Boys and Girls in America 

meant, but of course he had reason for disliking these 
whizzing monsters which nearly shaved red wheels off 
nice green carts. 

When he grew unusually tired there was one cool 
spot where he often pushed his cart up over the curb 
into the shade of the Biggest Church in Town. He 
himself would sit down wearily on the top step of the 
side entrance, lean his head against the closed door, 
shut his eyes and pretend that he was in Italy. Just a 
quick little trip, you understand; but it showed how 
homesick he was. And after the trip was over he 
would reach in his pocket to pull out a red handker¬ 
chief, which he would lay carefully across his knees as 
he opened it. For his dinner was inside—a sausage, a 
pickle and a hunk of bread. It always looked very dry 
and tasteless to a certain small person who was often 
standing in a certain window just opposite, waiting for 
him to come, watching to see him eat. 

And this certain small person said to himself, frown¬ 
ing, one day: “He brings such dreadful meals; I’m 
sure nothing but gulps of water would ever make such 
stuff as that go down my throat!” Then of course it 
was only natural for this certain small person to begin 
wondering about Banana Beppo’s throat; maybe water 
would make his dinner go down easier, too. But where 
was he going to get water, sitting on a lonely church 
door-step ? 

“Well, of course . . . maybe . . . why, yes, why 
not take it myself ?” whispered this small person to 
himself. 


85 


Banana Beppo’s Go-cart 

“Dear me! Would I dare,” he asked, exactly as if 
there were two of him, and one was talking to the 
other. “Of course I dare,” said the braver self, and 
ran out to the kitchen to fill a glass of water. 

Then, holding it very carefully in both hands, this 
small person tiptoed very gingerly down the back steps, 
crossed the narrow grass plot and reached Banana 
Beppo. But Banana Beppo had closed his eyes again 
to take another of those little trips of his. Instantly 
he had reached Italy again, and was standing beside 
a certain beautiful fountain where pretty water bubbled 
and rippled all day over the back of a big bronze frog, 
until it seemed that the frog’s bronze eyes blinked with 
sheer content at feeling that delightful drip! drip! drip! 
And Banana Beppo pretended that he was a little boy 
again, that real little boy who long years ago used to 
put his small red lips down into that fountain to drink 
deep of the bubbling water. But just as he was pre¬ 
tending to drink, a certain little flute seemed to pipe a 
cheerful tune right into his ear: “Here’s water, mister; 
water for your luncheon.” 

Banana Beppo opened his astonished eyes, and there 
was — W ell, who was it, anyhow, with so much golden 
hair and such very small trousers ? 

“I’m the minister’s son,” this little person exclaimed, 
“it’s my father who preaches in this church every Sun¬ 
day, and we live right next door. I often see you, and 
I thought maybe you’d like to wash the dry bread down 
with water! See?” 

Why, of course Banana Beppo saw! He beamed and 


86 Some Boys and Girls in America 

sparkled like jewels or rainbows or dazzling sunshine. 

“Thank-a! Thank-a!” he cried, gulping the water and 
smacking his lips to show how good it was. 

Now you must admit that a glass of water was a 
very small thing to give. Yet just see how it made that 
church walk right into Banana Beppo’s life. For the 
next Sunday, when he could not push his go-cart any¬ 
how, he brushed his old coat and washed his muddy 
shoes, and went to sit in a pew in the Biggest Church 
in Town. And the minister’s little bit of a son pointed 
him out to his mother. 

“Oh, look, mumsy dear, there’s my own special 
Italian man,” he whispered, “the one I gave a drink to.” 

So the minute church was over Mrs. Minister went 
to shake hands with him, and she introduced her hus¬ 
band. And Mr. Minister asked about the banana busi¬ 
ness—was he making a good living? 

“No,” sighed Banana Beppo, “no good-a living; my 
boss, he get-a all de mon-a I make-a!” 

So in a week or so Mr. Minister found him a better 
way to make a living, and the first thing anybody knew 
there was a new fruit store in town, with Banana Beppo 
smiling behind the counter. Then after a month or so 
a big boat brought some new Italians over the ocean 
from Italy to America, and five of them belonged to 
Banana Beppo—for there was Mrs. Beppo, Catterina, 
Giovanni, Tony and the cute Bambino. All on account 
of Banana Beppo’s better business they could now come 
over to live with him up over the store. And every 
single Sunday they were scrubbed within an inch of 
their lives and brought to the Biggest Church in Town, 


Nice Fresh-a Banan’! 


87 



The moment you begin to discover America for yourself you 
will notice that your own town is full of hundreds of Banana 
Beppos, Ragman Rafaelos and Junk-dealer Josefs, who really 
have the most fascinating stories in the world tucked up their 
blue gingham sleeves! Stories of good-bys in some quaint Old 
World village; of sailings over blue oceans which rise up like 
mountains and sink down like valleys; of arrivals in this Land 
of Noisy Bustle; of lonelinesses; of struggles. ... If you knew 
all these stories you would wish harder than ever that you knew 
how to make your church walk into their lives. 







Mrs. Beppo and all her wee Banana Beppos were 
not the only persons crossing to discover America—can 
you name some other nationalities? 




Banana Beppo’s Go-cart 89 

where there was a friendly minister and a warm wel¬ 
come. 

But you and I know that it was a little glass of 
water which first made the church walk right into 
Banana Beppo’s life! 


VII 


AS EASY AS ROLLING OFF A LOG 

I: Two Bumps On a Log 

I T almost seemed as if a Mad March Hare must have 
marched madly past: for certainly the two bumps 
on a log were left in a peculiar state! 

“Of course,” growled the bump named Pete, “if you 
were a boy, it wouldn’t be so bad.” 

Whereupon the bump named Kate bristled like a 
porcupine and said scathingly that if Pete had only 
been a girl life would be worth living once more, 

whereas now. (the dots are pin-prick glances!) 

The early robins heaved the red yokes of their new 
spring suits with tragic sighs, while down in his mud 
puddle the frog-who-would-a-wooing-go croaked out 
a dismal, “Bu-ump! Bu-ump!” But Kate and Pete 
gloomed on and on, until the very sun dropped part 
way down the sky to thaw their iciness. It was at this 
point that over the hill came walking the stranger whom 
every one called the Lady Who Had Broken Down. 
Not in any splint-and-crutch fashion, you understand: 
but it was whispered among the friendly villagers that 
the poor dear’s health had broken because she had evi¬ 
dently tried to do too many other people’s work, back 
in the city; even her charming smile had somehow be¬ 
come broken,—surely because she had seen too many 
sad sights one right after another. Sights much sadder 
90 



As Easy as Rolling Off a Log 91 

than two bumps on a log! In fact, she couldn't for 
the life of her see anything sad in them as she also sat 
down on their log and heard their tale of woe. 

“We’re all discouraged,” they sighed. 

“I’m all discouraged, too,” she echoed. 

“We seem to have nothing in the world to do,” they 
moaned. 

“And I seem to have everything in the world to do,” 
she groaned. 

“But we’re so disgusted to have only ourselves to 
talk to,” they explained. 

“Oh! and I’m so disgusted that there’s only myself 
to do all the talking people are waiting to hear!” 

Whereupon Pete and Kate stared at each other; here 
was a fix, indeed. She really seemed worse off than 
they themselves! 

“Besides,” she added, “you have all this heavenly 
country to look at, just miles and miles and miles of 
green-ness.” 

“But we know it all by heart,” sighed Kate, “we’ve 
known it for years! What we want is street cars 
clanging past the door—” 

“And the streets so jostled with trucks and fire en¬ 
gines and ambulances and autos and bicycles that you 
have to dodge things all the way across,” said Pete. 

“And we want whole rows of houses all up and down 
the street with girls eleven years old living in every 
single house,” Kate added. 

“Not much!” objected Peter. “Boys! Boys twelve, 
going on thirteen.” 

“I see,” smiled the Lady Who Had Broken Down. 


92 Some Boys and Girls in America 

“You must be twelve-going-on-thirteen, yourself; and 
Kate’s eleven. Um-m-m! I really must see what I 
can do about you—” and a faraway look came into her 
eyes, quite as if, out of a clear sky, she were going to 
summon neighbors and street cars and whole blocks 
of houses. “Um-m-m!” she murmured, while Pete 
nudged Kate with friendly suspense. For this was 
exactly the kind of thing people said she was always 
doing: taking the broken bits of other persons’ lives 
and mending them into “wholes” again. More silence. 

“Bu-ump! Bu-ump! Bu-ump!” suggested the frog- 
who-would-a-wooing-go. 

“Um-m-m!” replied the Lady, “I have it! For do 
you know, I honestly believe that you’re both cut out 
to be missionaries? Really I do! For missionaries 
have friends enough and to spare. Block after block 
after block of them. Oh, the stairs they have to climb, 
and the boys and girls they must meet, and the tales 
they must hear, and the crowded streets they must 
cross, and the forty ’leven things they must do for 
everybody from morning till night. There’s never 
enough of any one missionary to go around! They 
break down. Like me, you know. But you’re so young 
and so wild to work; oh, decidedly you’re meant to 
be missionaries! It’s amazing good fortune our all 
coming together this morning, for you can help me 
and I can help you. So I appoint you to your new 
jobs here and now.” 

“We’d 1-like it, t-thank you,” stammered Kate, “ever 
and ever so much. But how can we—living in the 
country ?” 


As Easy as Rolling Off a Log 93 

“Easy! As easy as rolling off a log,” and she smiled 
the smile that was so famous back in the city, “for all 
you two dear dismal bumps need do is to adopt a double 
back in my city. Some one who doesn’t have any of 
the things you take for granted. Some one who doesn’t 
know the simplest things you know about church or 
God or nature. Some one who longs for the country 
as much as you long for the city.” 

“Are there boys like that?” doubted Pete, sur¬ 
prised. 

“Listen!” cried the Lady. “Only a few weeks ago I 
was hurrying down an alley, oh! a perfectly hideous 
alley, all ash barrels and tin cans and wretched smells. 
I was carrying a jonquil, the first spring jonquil that 
I had raised in my own little sunny sheltered garden to 
take to somebody’s dear old granny who lived down 
that alley. But she never got it, poor dear, for along 
came a boy named Petros, and he gave one astonished 
look at what I was carrying, then said, ‘Dat’s sure some 
fancy leetle yaller tellyphome you got, Lady.’ 'But it’s 
a flower,’ I answered; 'just smell it, and feel it. I grew 
it myself in a garden.’ Petros flung back his head and 
laughed: 'And I thinks sure it’s one of them things 
at the drug store what you talks into if youse got a 
friend off somewheres. Leave me have another sniff, 
Lady. Say, it’s awful like a yaller tellyphome, ain’t it?’ 
‘It is/ I said, 'and I’m going to give it to you to keep.’ 
Oh, Pete, oh, Kate, I wish you could have seen his 
face then. For God made Petros with all the bubbling 
feelings of an artist, yet he never once had owned a 
flower before!” 


94 Some Boys and Girls in America 

“He almost has my name,” Pete said, “maybe he’d 
be a good double for me?” 

“The very one!” she cried. “Oh, what fun: Pete 
and Re-Pete!” 

Peter startled the frog-who-would-a-wooing-go by 
clapping his hands in huge delight: “Pete and Repeat! 
My, it couldn’t be better, could it, Kate ?” 

“N-no,” sighed Kate wistfully, “not unless there’s 
some dear, queer, funny way of doubling me, too. Is 
there ?” 

“Let’s see,” said the Lady Who Had Broken Down 
doing just such friendly things. “Well! why not Kate 
and Dupli-Kate? And I do declare, there’s my cross 
little Katya, a ready-to-adopt double if ever there was 
one! For Katya has the thing called infantile paralysis. 
All day long she is propped in a chair and dreams about 
the famous day when she and I 'walked on de Parks/ 
It was ages ago now, and she’s never been out of her 
room since, and she’s cross all day, peevish and 
grumbly—oh, it breaks my heart to have to be away 
from those dear people of mine!” 

Kate slipped a hand into the Lady’s: “Aren’t you 
forgetting? There’s Pete and Kate now! Just ex¬ 
plain how to be doubles,” she whispered. 

And the Lady explained. 

II: Pete and Repeat 

As far as Petros was concerned, America was en¬ 
tirely made up of Gentlemen-In-A-Hurry. Whenever 
the elevated trains came thundering overhead and 


As Easy as Rolling Off a Log 95 

stopped, these gentlemen would descend upon him, 
perch themselves on the throne above him, open wide 
their newspapers, prop their dusty shoes on the brass 
supports and call down nervously, “Get busy there, 
Mike! I’m in a big hurry.” 

Mike, indeed! Petros Archimedes Pappadoulos, 
with a proud snap of his great dark eyes, would plunge 
his fingers into the shoe paste and attack those boots left 
and right, left and right, with scientific nicety. But it 
was not what his fancy had painted, to be a mere Shine 
Boy, while all his poetic Greek soul was dreaming 
dreams and hungering for beauty. He had thought it 
was going to be exceedingly fine to come to America 
and earn a fortune. But fortunes grow so slowly— 
little by little they trickle into trouser pockets in tips 
from Gentlemen-In-A-Hurry: here a dime and there a 
nickel; but half the time nothing extra at all, just the 
even ten cents charged for every shine (and this the 
“Boss” collected, of course). 

“Sometime,” thought Petros, “I, too, will be a 
Gentleman-In-A-Hurry. I will hurry to catch the 
train, and the train will carry me to the green- 
meadowed places where there will be much grass to 
walk around on, just as my Lady of The Yellow Jon¬ 
quil told me.” 

For into almost every shine Petros rubbed the mem¬ 
ory of that lady of his. Hadn’t she written down his 
address and promised to come to see him? True, she 
had not come yet; but no doubt ladies in this bustling 
land were as hurried as the gentlemen. Meanwhile he 
treasured the jonquil, withered to a crackly brown, but 


96 Some Boys and Girls in America 

very precious still. And one day in March, when 
Spring was in the air, he counted the nickels and dimes 
and found he actually had enough money for that trip 
to the green-meadowed dream places! The places he 
had not known existed here. Oh, over in Greece there 
had been hazy hills and emerald valleys, sapphire seas 
and the immense quiet of little breezes ruffling the clean 
leaves! But here in America there had been so far 
only rumblings of carts and roarings of trains and 
gales of dusty wind whistling down back alleys. High 
time he went to discover this other America! So the 
evening before the great journey he shined his own 
shoes in spare moments, and hurried home to wash his 
one and only flannel shirt. For surely one ought to be 
stylish for such a discovery! 

But would you believe it? There at his door stood 
the Landlord with his hard cold hand held out for rent 
money. 

“Not time to pay so soon again ?” groaned Petros, 
unbelieving. 

“None of them old excuses now, you little tight¬ 
wad !” roared this vastly unpleasant person. 

“Say, I ain’t no tight-wad,” said Petros proudly, and 
diving into his pocket pulled forth the precious coins; 
and it was as if into the Landlord s cash box he saw 
disappearing a whole train of cars, a meadow or two 
and a Lady With A Jonquil. 

He went into the room that was really hardly a room 
after all (just a hole in the wall), and he sat down on 
the side of the bed that was hardly a bed (just boxes 
and rags and old sacks), and felt the ache of utter 


As Easy as Rolling Off a Log 97 

loneliness. Nothing left for him now in all America 
but Boots to-day, Boots to-morrow, Boots forever and 
ever. Boots; and rent! 

He turned his face to the wall, and finally went to 
sleep. In the morning he turned his face away from 
the wall and got up. But not a single dream would 
he let his mind paint of wide-stretching green-ness: 
“Bet there ain’t none, anyhow!” he sighed, as he 
trudged to the “Athenian Shine Parlor, shines io cents 
apiece.” 

It was a blue-as-indigo day. You know yourself 
that on blue days your fingers are all thumbs and every¬ 
thing goes at sixes and sevens. The same with Petros! 
So much so that not a tip did anybody give him, and 
he trudged home in the most down-and-out discourage¬ 
ment. And behold! the surprise of his life—a letter! 
And a package! For him, with his full name sprawled 
across them both, and his address. There could be no 
mistake, for his was such a very queer name with an 
even queerer address: 

Mr. Petros Archimedes Pappadoulos, 

27^4 Snipperdocket Alley, 

(in the top loft of stable in rear). 

For him, you see, and none other! Dazed, he sat down 
on the bed that was hardly a bed and opened the sur¬ 
prising envelope with its one red stamp: 

“Hello, Petros: 

Miss Truett told me about you, so I’m going to be your 
double now. Peter in the country to Peter in the city. Fd 


98 Some Boys and Girls in America 

rather be in the city myself. There are no people in the 
country, just things. 

It must be fun to shine as you do. 

It must be fun to have their feet come to you in dusty 
muddy shoes and shine them up so fine. I guess shoes are 
more interesting than anything else. If you could follow 
them all day, I mean. Are they lawyer shoes? Or doctor 
shoes? Or butcher shoes? Or minister shoes? You never 
know what wonderful things yours will do after you get them 
shined, do you? 

Here’s a Bible Miss Truett said you would like. It’s the 
size that soldiers carry in their pockets. You can carry it 
in yours. I have one like it myself. I looked up a verse 
about ‘feet’ for you, and one about ‘shine,’ too—another Peter 
wrote it. We have a popular name ! Later I’m going to send 
you flowers and things I find. This is all for now. You 
can wear them in your buttonhole, from 

Your double, 

Peter Hughes.” 

“Well, whatcher know about dis?” gasped Petros 
Pappadoulos. “I gotta double! me!!” And he ripped 
the string off his package with fingers that trembled. 
The little khaki Testament did exactly fit his pocket. 
He tried it! Two papers sticking out from between 
the leaves marked his special verses—one in Romans 
io: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of 
them that bring glad tidings of good things”; the other 
in Second Peter, chapter I: “A light that shineth in a 
dark place until the day dawn.” 

“That’s sure me!” chuckled Petros, “for don’t I 
shine in dat dark old Shine Parlor? Sure! Funny 
what he writes about feet being awful interesting. 
Guess I never figgered out how my Gentlemen-In-A- 


As Easy as Rolling Off a Log 99 

Hurry might be awful important fellers. I’ll shine 'em 
up gooder to-morrow! And say, I gotta double! I 
gotta double!!” 

The very cartwheels rumbled it at him the next morn¬ 
ing: “Gotta double? gotta double!” The elevated 
trains roared it down at him: “Gotta double!” All 
America sang it at him and he smiled back. He told 
the other Shine Boys: “I gotta double and he's going 
to send me meadows to wear in me buttonhole, he’s 
already sent me books to fit in me pocket. See? De 
book tells all about shoes and shines, too. See?” 

And one Gentleman-In-A-Hurry said laughingly, 
“Ever see a meadow, sonny? Here’s a nickel to send 
you to one!” While another gentleman said kindly, 
“Hello, you little minister!” 

“Nope, just a Shine Boy, mister, but I’d sure like to 
grow me some of them beautiful feet on the mount¬ 
ings.” 

“Better start growing 'em now, my boy,” said the 
Man-In-A-Hurry. 

“Guess I'll jess shine 'em onto you instead, mister!” 
Petros grinned. And there never was a shine in all the 
world like that one. Peter pocketed the tip, and treas¬ 
ured the man's parting words: “No other Shine Boy 
but you for me now, kid!” 

This thing of having a double had warmed up all 
America! 

It would be nice to tell you other things which Pete 
mailed to Re-Pete, week by week, things that he him¬ 
self enjoyed and liked to share: maple keys and Easter 
eggs and farmhouse cookies, lilies-of-the-valley, daisies, 



100 Some Boys and Girls in America 

roses, berries, red-cheeked apples, nuts—all easy as roll¬ 
ing off a log to country Pete, for it only cost a cent or 
two each week to post them in tin boxes which the 
grocer gave; but to Petros Pappadoulos they were 
worth about two million dollars! 

When his Lady of The Jonquil returned to town, she 
took Petros to her mission, and to-day he plays a flute 
in Sunday School; and of all the Shine Boys that there 
are she thinks that he shines brightest—in more ways 
than one! Because, you see, through Pete, he “gotta 
Friend.” And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some 
day the peasant folk of sunny Greece would watch him 
coming home and say, “How lovely on the mountains 
are the feet of him who brings glad tidings.” 


Ill: Kate and Duplicate 

What Pete repeated for his Petros, Kate duplicated 
for Katya—Katya, who sat all day long beside a win¬ 
dow where, when she looked up, she saw smokestacks, 
roofs and ugliness; where, when she looked down, she 
saw gutters, drays and ugliness; where, when she 
looked in, she saw clutter, dirt and ugliness. Not even 
Miss Truett had been able to put into Katya’s life any¬ 
thing brighter than a memory. The memory of the day 
when “I walked on de Parks.” 

But that was long ago. And now even Miss Truett 
was gone. Sick, they said. So the days dragged slowly 
by, while her family worked in their mills and their 
factories, and came home cross and tired at night. 
Katya was cross, also. 


As Easy as Rolling Off a Log 101 

“Why not ?” said she to herself, as she eyed the dis¬ 
mal smokestacks belching out black soot which would 
soon cast a heavy mourning veil over even the fattest 
of clean white clouds up in the sky. “Sooner you 
shows me anythings what grows bright and cheerful 
under dirt, then I makes me a smile-for-keeps all over 
me face,” Katya said to Miss Truett on her last visit. 

Miss Truett remembered these words; she told them 
to Kate. And Kate determined that the very first thing 
she mailed to her cross-patch double should be some¬ 
thing that really did grow brightest under dingy cover¬ 
ings ; but it took many a search in garden and woods 
before she discovered that very thing. 

Then there came a day just like any other day, when 
a knock on Katya’s door made her snap out, “Veil, 
come in, can’t you?” 

In came a neighbor with a box. “Look here, Katya 
Kolinski, if de postman don’t leave a package on you! 
Joost see what comes in de mail—mit strings and 
stamps und your name, joost like what fine ladies has 
got.” 

Katya’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, but she 
only said, “Aw, go on! Sooner you ain’t got nothin’ 
besser to do, you comes playin’ jokes on poor cripples! 
Go ’way!” 

“Now ain’t you got the awful tongue, though?” 
gasped the neighbor, outraged. “It ain’t no joke, 
honest! It’s packages-in-the mail. You open it.” 

Katya jerked the string and crackled off the paper, 
and lifted the lid. A lovely odor crept out, yet all she 
could see was a layer of damp brown leaves. She 


102 Some Boys and Girls in America 

lifted them gingerly, and there lay little pink and white 
flowers of a daintiness she had never dreamed could 
exist. And, oh, but they smelled! You and I would 
have said, “Arbutus!” but Katya had no name for this 
amazing beauty. She sniffed it all day, and at night 
when the family came home she called excitedly, “Ain’t 
I the swell lady mit postmans leaving a package on me 
und mit flowers what has got bigger smells on them 
than whole bottles of cologne ?” 

The next morning came a letter: 

“Dear Katya : 

Miss Truett is too sick to be your missionary for a while, 
so I’m taking her place by becoming your double. We’ll 
adopt each other, and belong. She told me all about you and 
I am sorry you feel cross. It must be horrid where you live 
—all black soot and dingy brown-ness. But the loveliest 
thing I ever saw was arbutus growing hidden away under 
horrid, old, damp, brown leaves; so I mailed you some to 
show you how awfully nice it is to smile away in dreary 
places. Miss Truett thinks that’s why God tucked you in 
a tenement all day, so you can always be on hand to cheer 
folks up. Babies. And grannies. And children with smashed 
thumbs. You know! All those things you have in cities. 
She thinks if you once started in being like arbutus, the day 
wouldn’t be long enough for you. Anyhow I’ll send you other 
things, for you belong to me now, and I’m— 

Your loving double, 

Kate Hughes.” 

You cannot grow a “smile-for-keeps” over night. 
But when delightful little boxes come by mail, and 
friendly little letters make you warm inside, the smile 


Two Bumps on a Log 103 



Here are two devoted (?) bumps on a log, before they dis¬ 
covered what a cheerful occupation could be theirs by merely 
adopting a double. In case you are ever quite bored with your 
own family, or even if you love them with all your heart, there’s 
a good suggestion in this story worth carrying out! 








Think what a fascinating parade you can order to 
march down any unpleasant street you select! 










As Easy as Rolling Off a Log 105 

begins to ripple itself around your lips before you 
know it. 

Sooner that Kate she sends love on me, than I 
loses the big mad I got,” Katya explained. 

And if Petros was a Shine Boy, sure it is Katya came 
to be a Sunshine Girl to all the babies and grannies in 
her block. When Miss Truett came home in August, 
she hardly could believe her eyes. 

“But I should have known that you did it, Katya, 1 ” 
she laughed, “for the country meadows are full of little 
insects and every blessed one of them kept chirping at 
me all day long, r Katy-did! Katy-did! Katy-did !’" 

* * * 

It makes me wonder if, in this big America, you’ve 
found your double, whom you alone can befriend as 
easy as rolling off a log! 


VIII 


LONG LIVE THE LITTLE PRINCE OF WAILS 

TSADORE PROSNOVITCH had no use for babies. 
■** You could rave all you cared to about their ten small 
fingers curling like the tendrils of a vine, or about 
their dear little mouths looking like pink rosebuds,— 
Isadore would look at you politely out of his solemn 
blue eyes and say calmly: “Maybe! I guess me baby 
don’t got none of them things, missus.” 

And when once you hear about Isadore’s baby you 
can’t be surprised that he had his own dark view of 
infants under two years old; for the truth of the matter 
is that Isadore’s mother and Isadore’s father, as well 
as Isadore’s brothers and sisters were away from home 
working all day long, so the entire job of “minding” 
this particular baby fell on poor solemn five-year-old 
Isadore. Moreover there are babies and babies. Isa¬ 
dore’s was the other kind: the kind that squalled and 
bawled and wailed and howled and fretted and fussed 
until the neighbors wore frowns an inch deep in their 
foreheads and wished that baby was ten thousand miles 
away. But that is nothing to the wish poor Isadore 
had! 

Yet every day he did his solemn best to startle the 
baby into forgetting to cry. It would have made your 
heart ache to see him go through his few little tricks: 

106 


Long Live Little Prince of Wails 107 

—When the baby first began to wail, Isadore would 
solemnly turn somersaults from one end of the kitchen 
to the other, and the wailing stopped as long as the 
somersaults lasted. But the moment Isadore grew ex¬ 
hausted there was a howl that could be heard a mile 
away. 

“Veil,” Isadore would sigh, “now I tink I better 
joost stan’ on me head.” 

So very solemnly and elaborately he stood on his 
head as long as ever he could, and the baby was quiet 
to watch him. But surely you know about how blood 
rushes to one’s head in that upside-down position, and 
when poor Isadore was forced to stand upright the cruel 
baby wailed and whined and roared until the frantic 
neighbors banged on the walls and the floors above to 
show their disapproval. 

“Veil,” sighed Isadore, “I tink now I takes you down 
on the alley.” So he tottered carefully down the steps 
with the heavy baby in his arms, then sat on the curb 
with the baby on his knee pointing out stray dogs and 
peddlers’ carts and passers-by who might amuse the 
cross-patch child. And it is here that Miss Jennie 
found him. 

Miss Jennie was a helper in our Christian Center 
and she thought it was a sight to cry over to watch 
such a very little boy play nursemaid to such a very 
wailing baby. Straightway she led them to our Center 
where she hoped a bath would help the wails! 

With mingled horror and delight Isadore watched 
her preparations as she filled a tub with water, water 
that looked very, very hot—for little clouds of steam 


108 Some Boys and Girls in America 

sailed upward toward the ceiling. “I tink she must be 
going to boil the baby,” he whispered to himself, “she 
vill boil him like potatoes is boiled, und he vill die!” | 
But he said nothing. Not one single word. He simply 
watched and watched, as she laid out towels and soap 
and a small round can. Then she undressed the baby 
who squalled his wailingest as he looked hopefully at 
that square and solemn brother-person, who at wails 
like these really ought to stand on his nice yellow head. 
But no, Isadore had handed over all responsibility to the 
crisp white nurse; so the clothes that had been sewed 
on to stay all winter were ripped off regardless of howls 
and yells and frantic squeals. But just as the nurse 
was ready to put the little cross-patch in the tub, Isa¬ 
dore simply had to say: “Veil, I tink this vill kill him 
sure!” And somehow, there was a certain satisfied ac¬ 
cent in his voice that made the nurse swing around on 
her heel and stare at Isadore doubtfully. 

“Isadore,” she said severely, “surely you wouldn’t 
want to lose your dear little baby brother, would you ?” 

He stared back at her out of his honest blue eyes, 
“Yes’m,” he admitted, “if it’s all the same to you’m, 
please.” 

“Oh, but that’s wicked, cruelly wicked!” she cried. 

“Yes’m,” agreed Isadore, his eyes as honest as ever. 
For what did this lady in white understand about babies 
anyhow? Wait till she knew his baby and heard the 
very worst of his wails which could last hours on hours. 
But the lady evidently decided the bath had better come 
first, then conversation; so into the water she plunged 
the astonished baby who was actually speechless with 


Long Live Little Prince of Wails 109 

the shock at first, then utterly furious. But in spite of 
squalls the lady saw her duty, and she did it! Oh, 
how she lathered soft soap-suds all over that baby’s 
body—how she doused it with fresh water—how she 
rubbed it dry with a towel—then covered it with sweet 
powder. After which came a clean little night dress. 
And wonder of wonders, that baby began to coo. 

Isadore leaned nearer. Yes, it was a bona fide coo! 
Next the baby began sucking on a bottle of warm milk, 
and actually . . . dozed ... off ... to .. . sleep. 
It was beyond belief! Isadore held his breath as the 
lady laid the contented baby in a crib, and then led 
Isadore into another room where they sat down. 

“How old are you, Isadore?” the lady asked. 

“Goin’ onto five, mum,” he answered. 

She sighed at his solemn face: “Have you ever 
played, dear? Or smiled? Or laughed?” 

“Veil, once I laughed,” Isadore said, “once I hides 
me baby under a store counter und I tinks: ‘now I lose 
him for sure/ und I smiles on the lady what keeps the 
store und she smiles on me as I hurries out. But just 
then the baby he squawk something fierce, und the 
storekeeper she guess what I done—tryin’ to lose him 
on her, so she says to me: ‘I’ll learn you not to smile 
no more, you awful little brudder/ Und she puts 
spankings on me something terrible. So I don’t smile 
no more on nobody, see ?” 

The missionary lady sighed: “Oh, Isadore, you can 
smile on me safely, dear, for we are going to be friends. 
And I’ll even make you come to love that poor baby. 
Did you know he only wailed because his clothes were 


110 Some Boys and Girls in America 

mussy and sticky, and because he was fed—well, what 
did you feed him, anyhow ?” 

Isadore put his head on one side, trying to re¬ 
member : “Veil, I tink he eat most anything what’s left 
over like coffee und sausage und pickles und cheese—” 

“Horrors!” gasped the lady, when she heard this list 
of all wrong things, and carefully explained about a 
diet of milk to make babies smiling and pleasant and 
lovable. Isadore tried his solemn best to listen, but his 
eyes kept wandering around the fascinating room 
where pictures and playthings and even the little tables 
seemed made especially for some one his size. And no 
sooner had he thought this than the lady delightfully 
said: “This is the kindergarten room where you are 
going to play every single morning from now on, Isa¬ 
dore, while your baby stays in our Day Nursery with 
fifty other babies whose mothers are working. Won’t 
this be a good plan?” 

“Veil, all right,” gulped Isadore, “only vill you learn 
me how to play ?” 

So with love and care and friendliness, Isadore lost 
his solemnness; and the helpers in our mission did their 
level best to make him love the baby whom they nick¬ 
named “the little Prince of Wails” (W..A..I..L..S, 
of course!) but who had lost his wail by this time, and 
had a rosebud mouth and tendril fingers. 

Moreover, Isadore’s mother came to visit at our 
Center and this is what she said after she had been all 
over the building: “Ven my little Issy, he tell me of 
the place he comes on, every morgen, I slaps him hard 
und tinks he makes me one grand lie. ‘Ach, there ain’t 


Smoke Children 


111 



The next time you go down town, do please look in the smoke 
of factory chimneys to see if you cannot catch glimpses of wee 
faces in the billowy puffs of gray and tan forever belching forth 
to cover with soot even the cleanest of little fat white clouds— 
faces of Katya, and Isadore, and Finis, and all the young Banana 
Beppos. It will make you wonder whether you might not be 
Princes and Princesses of Wails yourselves if you had to play 
in a tenement alley with soot and cinders and ashes and old 
tomato cans! 



What a curious place the world would be if all little 
boys were so solemn that they had to be taught how to 
hop-skip-and-jump! 




Long Live Little Prince of Wails 113 

no such a place/ I says, * 'cept maybe up in heaven mit 
angels to wash dirty kids und play mit stupid little 
boys!’ But now, missus, I sees it heaven on earth, this 
building, mit room for everybodies. Say? Dast I 
bring the udder kids what works in factories? Dast 
they join a class at night und learn them how to sew? 
Or maybe I ask so much, yes ?” 

But you know the answer! And to-day the Pros- 
novitches, big and little, flock to that Center of ours 
as eagerly as the little Prince of Wails, himself; as for 
Isadore, he not only knows how to play, but has learned 
a number of stories to make him appreciate babies 
better:—stories of the baby Moses in the bulrushes, 
and of the baby Jesus in a manger, and of other babies 
whom this same Jesus, later on, held in His arms and 
blessed. 

“1 tells you what I tinks,” says Isadore with his 
solemn smile, “I tinks those there Christians what 
builds us this here Center has blessed all the little kids 
joost like Jesus onct done it!” 

And I agree with him, don't you ? 


IX 


SHINING MARK 

S ILENCE! Silence that fairly pushed you down 
and hurt your ear drums. Oh, there never was 
a silence like it: a thousand giant trees—and one boy 
under them. A thousand mammoth tree trunks—and 
one boy trudging between them. Ten thousand vast 
branches—and one boy underneath them. But always 
so many giant trees that the boy seemed pigmy-size. 
Always so much “hush” everywhere that the boy’s soft 
footfalls sounded like cannon-balls. The forest ani¬ 
mals heard him and secretly scurried to cover in high 
alarm. But even they made no noise. 

It was only the boy who broke up the oppressive still¬ 
ness. And he was not really little at all, for he was 
eleven-going-on-twelve; but he had no one his own 
size or age with whom to compare himself, and he 
honestly thought that he was going to be a Perpetual 
Pigmy—it was the tree trunks which made him think 
this; for however tall one may become, they are always 
taller; and, as it happened, all the lumberjacks were 
towering hulks of men. So, what with trees and lum¬ 
berjacks, Mark felt himself a Doomed Dwarf. But 
that was foolish of him, for there are inside measure¬ 
ments as well as outside ones, and after various adven¬ 
tures you will see how Mark shot up into quite a 
colossal figure. 


114 


115 


Shining Mark 

But meanwhile he was trudging through the silent 
forest primeval, and the awful hush of its loneliness 
was startling him. Not a soul, not a sound, not a twig 
moving, not a leaf stirring. 

Mark did not like it! It made him feel little and 
unimportant, and he abominated feeling little and un¬ 
important, when here he was all of twelve years old, 
planning definitely to be Boss of the Sawmills. Then 
the lumberjacks would pay some attention to him; oh, 
yes, sir! Then they would stop acting as if he did not 
exist; oh, yes, sir! Then they would listen to the 
things he said with due respect. . . . 

For Mark was brimful of remarks, but alas! alas! 
the lumberjacks had a horrible fashion of snapping: 
“Quit it, kid! Go out and tell the man in the moon.” 
This gentleman seemed so remote that Mark attached 
himself solely to One Lung, the Chinese cook. One 
Lung used to stir things in the various pots and an¬ 
swer every question with a politic: “Velly likely, Malk, 
velly likely.” It was not at all satisfactory. Nothing 
was satisfactory. Mark wanted excitement, lots and 
lots of it; yet here was the very forest hushed to a 
silence so tense that his scalp prickled with awe. 

It was then that the ridiculous plan popped into his 
head. He was so enchanted with it that he set down 
the big coffee canteen and stood staring into space as 
he pictured it all out. . . . Oh, it would be rare fun! 
Rare fun! They would pay attention to him this time, 
sure enough. So, leaving the canteen behind him, he 
took to his heels and ran pell-mell between the mon¬ 
strous tree trunks. On and on and on, until finally the 


116 Some Boys and Girls in America 

heavy silence was broken by the sound of axes and the 
crash! crash! crash! of falling branches. He was near¬ 
ing the place where the men were felling trees, and he 
ran faster than ever until—breathlessly—he was in 
their midst yelling excitedly: “Fire! Fire!! A nawful 
big fire down Hollow Rock way!” 

It worked like a charm. 

Tuxedo Tex dropped his ax. Slippy Sam came 
running toward him. Others began sliding down the 
tree trunks whose branches they had been sawing: 
“What's the kid saying?” they asked, as they dropped 
to the ground. 

“Awful fire—Hollow Rock—not a second to lose— 
come on, fellows!” And away they tore toward Hol¬ 
low Rock to save the precious woods, dry as tinder 
just then owing to lack of rain. 

Mark, left behind, stood in the clearing laughing 
heartily at the success of his big joke. He slapped his 
hands together gleefully as he looked with appreciation 
at the way he had stopped everything midway—saws 
half through the trunks—axes sunk into clefts of the 
bark—coats left dangling from branches—lunch pails 
standing untasted. 

Mark then remembered the canteen which he had left 
further back in the forest; he started toward it and the 
same old silence hung over the forest, almost as if some 
immense secret were about to be whispered. Mark, 
who had just felt so big, suddenly began to dwindle 
and dwindle until he was once more the Perpetual 
Pigmy, the Doomed Dwarf. 

He picked up the heavy canteen and staggered back 


117 


Shining Mark 

to One Lung. So crestfallen was he that he never once 
thought of emptying out the cold coffee to save half of 
this burdensome weight. 

One Lung took the big tin unemotionally. He had 
a secret contempt for lumberjacks and their enormous 
appetites. All China did not eat as much in a year as 
these thirty ravenous men in one day, he used to think 
as he flapped pancakes and heated great cauldrons of 
stew. 

“Him no likee coffee?” he asked, noticing that the 
canteen was full. 

Mark chuckled in high glee as he told One Lung the 
delectable trick. Not a muscle of One Lung’s face 
changed, but as he peered into the soup pot he said in 
a bored fashion: “Me thinkee you getee velly good 
lickee.” And instantly Mark knew that such would be 
the outcome: thirty exhausted men would come tramp¬ 
ing back to camp, furious at being fooled, wishful of 
wreaking vengeance on the gay young deceiver. . . . 
He began to tremble. . . . 

Sure enough, toward evening, Mark heard their 
dreaded voices: “Where is that kid?” “You miserable 
rascal!” “You mean little scallawag!” “We’ll teach 
you to play jokes!” Oh, the half cannot be told in 
print; but Mark had to lie in bed for one whole week 
owing to various beatings and battings. Poor One 
Lung had to carry the coffee to the clearing himself 
on all those seven noons. For once in his life Mark 
was content to feel little and unimportant and un¬ 
noticed. The wind in the treetops was the best friend 
he had, also the squirrels that scampered to the camp 


118 Some Boys and Girls in America 

window to regard the limp being lying in a bunk. 
“Not much pep 1 ” sighed the gentlemen squirrels. “Not 
a bit!” echoed their ladies. 

But of course, in time, the bruises stopped smarting 
and the welts flattened down into normal skin, so that 
Mark was able to resume his old duties about the camp. 
But he was a very proper sort of person. Oh, very! 

Meanwhile the dry weather grew drier than ever, 
until one month later, as the men were off in the dis¬ 
tant woods chopping and sawing as usual, they saw 
Mark come dashing toward them: “Fire! Fire!! ,t he 
shouted breathlessly, “a nawful fire—all around the 
timber piles down in the Old Camp!” 

The lumberjacks looked at him with twinkling 
amusement. “Just keep it up, sonny!” “Yell a little 
louder!” “Think you’re going to catch us twice with 
that same old yarn ?” 

Mark waved his arm like a windmill: “Oh, but this 
time it’s true! True! Horrible tongues of fire—lick¬ 
ing up all the timber,—oh, hurry! Hurry!” 

“Say, ain’t he the clever little actor?” sneered Tux¬ 
edo Tex. 

“Hurry! Hurryi” simpered Slippy Sam, imitating 
Mark’s breathless voice. 

Mark was stifled with despair and lack of breath: 
“It’s true, I tell you! Fire all around the Old Camp—” 
He waved his arms, he shook his fists, he clutched at 
their sleeves. 

But they shook him off: “Holler more like you meant 
it, kid,” drawled Hesitation Harry in his languid voice. 

Mark panted like some one in a nightmare battling 


119 


Shining Mark 

his way through to reality: “Crackling . . . hissing 
. . . roaring . . . can’t you believe me, fellows! It’s 
just awful down there, so blazing red and hot. Come 
on, not a moment to lose!” 

But they simply laughed at him, until suddenly a 
curious blackness fell like a curtain before Mark’s eyes 
and from sheer exhaustion and fear he fell in a faint 
at their feet. 

A stir of amazement went around the group. Hesi¬ 
tation Harry gingerly tiptoed near to see if this were 
more play-acting, but Mark’s chalk-white face con¬ 
vinced him that something was really wrong, and Tux¬ 
edo Tex cried hoarsely: “Men, he’s telling the gospel 
truth for once in his life. Smell his clothes—they’re 
full of wood smoke!” 

A dozen men sniffed wisely at the heavy odor and 
instantly cried: “Smoke it is! Come on, fellows, the 
kid was telling the perpendicular.” 

Off they rushed, but it was a useless race, for already 
the timber stacked for hauling was one mass of hideous 
roaring flames—rolling, creeping, sucking, crackling, 
with enormous clouds of smoke billowing gloomily up¬ 
ward until high noon seemed night-time. Twenty 
hours they battled with those flames, and if it had not 
been for a thunderstorm, zig-zagging across the sky and 
deluging the woods, there really might not be any more 
to this story. 

Weary, sober, exhausted, nearly dead for lack of 
sleep, the men plodded back to camp, drank coffee 
which One Lung doled out to them, then dropped into 
their bunks asleep before they even lay down. Poor 




120 Some Boys and Girls in America 

Mark crept around on tiptoe dreading their awaken¬ 
ing, for he remembered certain tragic events in past 
history! Nothing ever sounded quite as beautiful to 
him as their continued snoring, snoring, snoring . . . 
but of course it would have to end some time. He 
began rehearsing certain sentences, such as: “Now, see 
here, it really only wasted ten minutes—your not be¬ 
lieving me, I mean! You couldn’t have saved the tim¬ 
ber in those ten minutes, honest Injun!” 

But to his complete surprise there seemed to be no 
especial need for his sentences, since nobody struck 
him, nobody kicked him, nobody slapped his ears. In¬ 
stead of curses and cuffings, Tuxedo Tex merely hauled 
out his comical little old brass-bound trunk that had a 
camel’s hump in the top of it. He began unpacking 
the rather stylish clothes which had, no doubt, once 
earned him his nickname. 

“Boys,” said Tuxedo Tex, “ain’t it a fact that this 
kid is fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless? 
Ain’t it a fact that he ain’t been brung up proper? 
Ain’t it a fact that he ain’t never been hitched up to 
all the things a mother usually learns a kid, owing to 
the fact that Salvation Sue died while the kid was still 
an infant-babe? Well, how about us learning him a 
little gospel truth from this old Book which my Aunt 
Amelia willed to me instead of the fortune I expected 
off her?” 

“Right you are!” said Old Man Jones. 

“That’s the talk!” nodded Slippy Sam; “why, down 
East, a kid Mark’s age goes to Sunday School real 
reggaler, while they raises him to be a deacon.” 


Shining Mark 121 

“Say, I don’t want to be no deacon!” growled Mark, 
much embarrassed by this sudden prominence. 

But Tuxedo Tex had the final “say”: “The kid’s 

I getting to be an awful liar, and lying ain’t a pretty art. 
No, sir, it don’t get a fellow anywhere! It’s too tricky. 
He’ll land us all in trouble some day if we don’t raise 
him proper. So this is half for our own protection, 
men, and half for Salvation Sue. You recollect that 
she was a mighty good sort and she died while cooking 
for this here camp, so I move we take reggaler steps 
to rear her kid decent.” 

“Count on me!” said Hesitation Harry. 

“And me.” 

“Same here!” 

“I’m a grand little old Sunday School teacher!” “I’ll 
learn him his catechism!” The offers came thick and 
fast, some in fun and some in earnest, until poor Mark 
began to wish himself less important in their eyes. 

“I don’t want to be fetched up good!” he cried. 
“You’ll do as you’re told,” said Tuxedo Tex, “and 
I’m ordering you now to read this Bible. It’s a mighty 
fine Book from all I’ve heard of it, and my Aunt 
Amelia knew it by heart.” 

“I don’t want to be no Aunt Amelia!” growled 
Mark, horrified at what the Book might make of him— 
a deacon! An aunt! 

But he had to take it; and while sixty eyes kept 
watch, he had to sit and read it. He turned the pages 
listlessly. Such tremendous names in big print at the 
top of the pages—“Deuter-somebody or other.” He 
felt unequal to it! Not knowing Roman numerals he 







122 Some Boys and Girls in America 

read the titles “One-Eyed Samuel, 1 ” “Two-Eyed Sam¬ 
uel, 1 ” “One-Eyed Kings/’ “Two-Eyed Kings” with 
some surprise. Then he flapped more pages dutifully, 
until suddenly he sat up straight as a ramrod: “Mark.” 

Yes, sir, Mark! And in the Bible. ... Well!! 
The sixty watchful eyes grew less watchful as they 
saw the boy so plainly spellbound. 

One Lung clanged his meal bell with his usual deaf¬ 
ening din. Mark never moved. Tuxedo Tex nudged 
Old Man Jones: “He’s getting religion already!” 

“Sure, I used to read like that when I was a kid. 
Only it was all about pirates and things. I wasn’t a 
plain kid, I was being monarch of all I surveyed, scut¬ 
tling ships and burying treasure. Never heard a school 
bell, never heard a dinner bell, never heard nothing. 
But I didn’t suspicion that the Bible took a hold all the 
same as pirates.” 

“Oh, sure,” said Tuxedo Tex. “Why, I seen my 
Aunt Amelia read it for hours at a stretch, like she 
couldn’t get enough of it.” 

“Yeah, but Mark ain’t no auntie!” 

So they called him for supper, and he looked up, 
his eyes like stars. 

“Funny, ain’t it, that anybody named Mark should 
get into a book I never heard of? I haven’t come to 
Mark yet, but say, it tells all about somebody named 
Jesus—ain’t He the one you fellows keep talking 
about ?” 

A shamed guilty look passed over their rough faces. 
Bronzed cheeks grew red; big hands twitched uneasily; 
everybody’s eyes lowered. Mark looked with amaze- 


Shining Mark 123 

ment from one to the other. “What’s got into you all, 
anyhow ?” 

Tuxedo Tex cleared his throat and became spokes¬ 
man: “Forget it, Mark. We ain’t no models, kid. 
WeTe just left over odds and ends of men who have 
got far off from home. We ain’t kept our conversation 
nice or decent. We shouldn’t never have used that 
Name like we did. You forget it! For from now on 
you’re going to be brung up straight. And from now 
on, the fellow in this camp who swears has got to have 
a terrible day of reckoning with me, ain’t that square?” 

More uneasiness. More twitching hands. Nobody 
knew what to say. In bringing up Mark they would 
certainly be bringing up themselves. . . . The tense 
situation was broken when One Lung came to the door, 
tucking his hands up his sleeves as he sighed indiffer¬ 
ently : “Me ringee the bell, you clum eatee qlick.” 

Everybody laughed and trooped indoors to stoke 
away an enormous meal. But thirty consciences were 
uneasy, and those who remembered Salvation Sue 
thought that her old bountiful meals, her enormous 
cheerfulness, and her vigorous religion, deserved some 
reward now in their treatment of Mark. Yes, they 
would keep Mark everlastingly at his Bible. 

But Mark was a willing pupil. The stories which 
you have known all your life were brand new to him, 
and he was speechless with surprise: “The Book’s all 
about one of them doctor-men,” he said, at the end of 
a few chapters. “Wasn’t anybody too sick for Jesus! 
Not old ladies with fevers, nor Reapers,’ nor fellows 
who had to be let down through the roof in their beds, 


124 Some Boys and Girls in America 

nor fellows with withered hands, nor mad men, nor 
nothing. Why, one little girl actually died; but Jesus 
said to her: ‘Now, little girl, you get right up!’ And 
she did. Just as easy! But what worries me is that 
I don’t come across Mr. Mark himself yet.” 

The day when he reached the feeding of the five 
thousand, Mark took his Bible to the cook-house. 
“Here’s a chapter for you, One Lung! Listen.” One 
Lung listened. “Think of it, only five loaves and two 
small fishes and all that gang of hungry fellows. You 
never fed a gang of five thousand, I guess.” 

One Lung looked interested: “Malk,” he said ear¬ 
nestly, “me thinkee you talkee ’bout God. ’Melican 
God feedee those flive thlousan’—yes?” 

“No,” said Mark, “it was Jesus who fed them. He 
wasn’t a God, was He ?” 

One Lung gazed out of his sad yellow face with an 
actual spark of eagerness: “Velly likely, Malk, velly 
likely.” 

Mark took his question to Old Man Jones: Was 
Jesus a God? Old Man Jones “allowed it was God, 
but you’d better ask Tuxedo Tex, his Aunt Amelia 
learned him lots of Bible facts, and I’ve growed up an 
ignorant fellow.” 

Tuxedo Tex lookd very much embarrassed: “I ain’t 
a Sky Pilot,” he objected, gruffly, as he thumbed the 
pages and looked for answers to Mark’s questions. 
“But look here, kid, here’s a verse underlined by my 
old Aunt Amelia, with her own initials right alongside 
of it. You read that verse, kid.” 

Mark took the Bible and read: “Thou shalt love the 


125 


Shining Mark 

Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This 
is the first commandment. And the second is like unto 
it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” 

Tuxedo Tex ticked off these various points on his 
fingers: “Heart, soul, mind, strength. Let’s see now, 
—hearts are for loving; and souls are what you go to 
heaven with; minds, you think with; and as for 
strength, come here and let me feel your muscle.” 

Mark pummeled with his right arm, and flexed his 
sinews proudly. 

“Some muscle!” crooned Tuxedo Tex delightedly. 

The entire camp tested the biceps approvingly. Mark 
began to find it suddenly easy to love his neighbor as 
himself! And then, in the midst of all this new inter¬ 
est, came the tragedy—the story of the crucifixion and 
the false trial that led up to it. Mark could hardly be¬ 
lieve his eyes. “Why, they lied!” he cried, with blaz¬ 
ing wrath. 

“Lyin’ causes a peck of trouble!” sighed Tuxedo 
Tex, warningly. 

But Mark was suddenly as blue as indigo. For here 
he had been, admiring Jesus; yet this other Mark had 
actually let him be killed,—and falsely. Oh, you be¬ 
lieve me, if I’d been there I’d have saved Him,” Mark 
groaned. “How long ago did all this happen anyway, 
I wonder.” 

Old Man Jones said it was a good bit before the Civil 
War, he was sure. 

Mark walked through the forest with the coffee can¬ 
teen that day, and every branch on every tree trunk 


126 Some Boys and Girls in America 

seemed to form a cross. Hot anger surged through 
him: what had that other Mark been thinking about to 
let Jesus die? A wonderful man like Him! No won¬ 
der Mark never wrote a word about himself in his 
book: “Ashamed!” Mark nodded grimly. “A quit¬ 
ter !” Then he closed his eyes in order not to see the 
tree trunks and those awful branches forming crosses. 
And when he returned to camp he took Tuxedo Tex’s 
Bible, he lifted the lid of the brass-bound trunk with 
the hump on top of it, he dropped the Bible inside with 
a thud. 

“I’m through reading books by quitters,” he said at 
supper. 

Tuxedo Tex was alarmed. “But you was coming 
along so fine with your motto and your religion and 
all. You ain’t going to be a quitter yourself, Mark?” 

Mark looked him straight in the eye—shining blue 
eyes into faded gray eyes: “Guess I wouldn’t be so mad 
on Mark if I was quitting myself, would I?” 

So nothing more was said about religion, camp life 
seemed to be jogging along in its usual routine (except 
that nobody ever swore in the presence of Mark) until 
the astonishing news broke: One Lung was going back 
to China! 

You would never guess from his calm behavior that 
it was anything unusual to stop being section cook of 
Lumber Camp No. IX. and sail three thousand miles 
over deep blue ocean and go another thousand miles 
overland by foot into the very interior of heathen 
China. One Lung treated it as if it were merely step- 


Shining Mark 127 

ping from the cookhouse to the mess room, and for 
exactly the same reason:— 

‘‘Now me knowee ’Melican God, me clarry Him 
home. Flamily in Chlina velly hungly of God. Me 
takee. Me talkee all the samee you talkee to me, Malk.” 

That was all there was to it! Mark had told One 
Lung about Jesus, One Lung believed every word of 
it, therefore neither pots of stew nor vats of coffee 
nor flapjacks could keep him in this country a moment 
longer. Mark’s face shone from the inside out! It 
was then that he began to be a giant by inside measure¬ 
ment. He had never heard the words “Home Mis¬ 
sions” or “Foreign Missions” in his entire life, he 
simply knew that something tremendous had been mov¬ 
ing him and that when he told One Lung, the same 
tremendous thing moved him. Moved him, in fact, to 
China! 

Nor had any of the lumberjacks ever heard of a mis¬ 
sionary offering; yet when One Lung ripped open his 
mattress and counted the savings hidden there nobody 
felt that he had enough money for the long trip, and a 
collection was taken which sent the old fellow away 
with an actual beam on his usually immovable yellow 
parchment face. 

“Thlankee velly much,” he bowed and bowed, with 
each hand tucked up the opposite sleeve in true Chinese 
style. But he did not depart until he had spent a day 
“breaking in” the new Chinese cook to his job. The 
two men jabbered endlessly from morning until night, 
and that it was not all about pots and pans was very 


128 Some Boys and Girls in America 

plain when One Lung said to Mark as he left the camp: 
“Malk, new clook he velly blad man. You talkee God, 
Malk.” 

Mark, therefore, tackled the new cook, but this up¬ 
setting person reached in his belt and pulled out two 
small brass idols: “No wantee new God. * Got two nice 
lilly blass gods alleady, see?” 

Mark looked at the idols in complete astonishment. 
It is true that One Lung had explained the fact that all 
over China men, women and children were bowing 
down to images such as these, bringing offerings, say¬ 
ing prayers—but seeing is believing. Mark was stag¬ 
gered by the sight. He handled one of the little gods 
with real disgust: “But you mustn’t pray to this, Sam 
Sing! It’s no more a god than an iron kettle’s a god, 
see ?” 

The new cook shrugged his shoulders: “No wantee 
dead God, Malk. Nice lilly blass god bletter than dead 
God, Malk.” 

Mark was troubled; there was no answer he could 
make, for Jesus had certainly died. Sam Sing thought 
that a god to be seen and handled was better than one 
who had died years ago. What could Mark say to 
that? 

And then the wonderful thing happened,—a thing 
you and I bring to pass in various lumber camps when 
we put our offerings in the collection plates on Sunday 
mornings in church! A “Sky Pilot” came to visit that 
camp. It had been many years since any of the lumber¬ 
jacks had attended a Christian service; and, of course, 
for Mark, it was an entirely new experience. He sat 


The Home of Wooden Pencils, Pens, Etc. 129 



After One Lung had gone back to China you will remember 
how Shining Mark saw two Chinese idols and had the astonish¬ 
ment of his life. No doubt, after that, as he carried coffee to 
the lumberjacks he must have prayed in prose what “Bobby’s 
Prayer” * says in poetry. 

Dear Father, there’s the other hoy to-night, 

Whc/s praying to a god that’s made of wood. 

He asks it to take care of him till light, 

And love him—but it won’t do any good. 

He is so far, 1 cannot make him hear; 

I’d call to him and tell him, if I could, 

That You’ll take care of him, that You are near 
And love him—for his god is made of wood. 

I know he'd ask You if he only knew; 

I know he’d love to know You if he could. 

Dear God, take care of him, and love him, too — 

The other hoy, whose god is made of wood . 


* Poem by Margarita Haywood. 


When your pencil makes its mark 
Remember, please, young Shining Mark! 


Shining Mark 131 

on the first seat and stared at the missionary with his 
eyes like saucers. And the missionary, who was used 
to dealing with the roughest kind of rough, restless 
men, was rather astonished at this quiet, willing 
audience. 

“I suppose you fellows know that this is Easter Sun¬ 
day morning, the day when the Lord Jesus Christ arose 
from the dead.” 

Mark stood up, his face shining: “I knew it! I 
knew it! Say, mister, just wait a second till I fetch 
Sam Sing!” 

Mark dashed to the cookhouse and dashed back 
dragging the unwilling Chinaman: “Now,” said 
Mark, “just you listen hard to this here Sky Pilot, and 
you’ll find that Jesus didn’t stay dead!” 

That Easter was a wonderful day. Over and over 
Mark saw his folly in hiding the Bible; two more 
chapters in the gospel of Mark and he could have saved 
himself all those months of anxiety. 

“The truth of the matter is, my boy,” the missionary 
explained, “that Mark knew little more of Jesus per¬ 
sonally than you know. Historians think that Mark 
never saw the Saviour himself, but that he was a great 
friend of the Apostle Peter, and from Peter’s lips heard 
all that he later wrote into his gospel. And Mark, do 
you know that the Bible isn’t finished yet?” 

“Isn’t it?” Mark asked. “Why not?” 

The Sky Pilot looked at the boy earnestly: “Because 
every Christian is adding new chapters each day that 
he lives, finishing the works which Jesus began. You, 
for instance, have been writing another ‘Gospel Accord- 


132 Some Boys and Girls in America 

ing to Mark,’ and I think that God is very proud of 
the chapters you have written so far, with One Lung 
in China as a direct result of your talking with him, 
and Sam Sing beginning to doubt his poor little brass 
gods, and this whole camp of rough men becoming 
fond of the new Mark you are making of yourself.” 

Mark’s eyes shone: “The Gospel According to 
Mark! The Gospel According to me, Mark—say, it’s 
an awfully important job to help finish the Bible, isn’t 
it?” 

Perhaps, on quiet Sunday mornings as you sit in 
church, it will give you a thrill of especial delight to 
murmur to yourself: “Pews and pillars and steeples. 
Houses, front porches and barns. Chairs and tables 
and beds. Pianos, violins and victrolas. Picture- 
frames, mantelpieces, and matches. Street-cars and 
stations and telegraph poles. Ships and oars and 
wharves. Pens and pencils and rulers. All wood!” 
For as you remember the great forests of trees, stretch¬ 
ing silent and lonely across wide sections of the map, 
you can also remember Shining Mark trudging under 
those giant branches, as he (with you) is “finishing the 
Bible,” for 

“We are writing the gospels a chapter a day 

In the deeds that we do and the words that we say. 

Pray, what is the gospel according to — you ?” 


MIND YOUR P'S AND q's 


S far as minding their P's and Q’s went, you may 



be sure that Pee Wong and Pee Ming minded 
them—they had to! For the sad truth of the matter 
was that their father had just eaten their teak-wood 
cabinet (the one they had brought over from China), 
he had even eaten their red lacquer rice bowls and all 
their wadded silk garments, and one by one he had also 
eaten all their little embroidered slippers and their green 
jade necklaces and their kingfisher bracelets. Not that 
he actually chewed and swallowed such hard indiges¬ 
tible objects, but he kept selling these things so that he 
might continue to be that most selfish of all mortals, an 
opium-eaten, one who craves nothing but opium and 
yet more opium; until, when everything else was sold, it 
was no wonder that their mother warned Pee Wong 
and Pee Ming that the next thing anybody knew, their 
father would be selling them. Goodness knows, there 
were plenty of Chinamen in San Francisco wicked 
enough to buy such nice little yellow tea-rose maidens 
for slave-girls—and she would paint rather terrible 
pictures of what it meant to be a slave: some one who 
could be slapped on the ears whenever anything went 
wrong—some one who could be forced to carry im¬ 
possibly heavy things all day long—or—or—oh! worse 


133 


134 Some Boys and Girls in America 

yet were the horrible things she really could not bring 
herself to mention in so many words. It was these 
unmentionable things that caused uncomfortable shiv¬ 
ers to ripple up and down the backbones of Pee Wong 
and Pee Ming, and made them mind their P’s and Q’s 
harder than ever. 

Perhaps you are wondering what P’s and Q’s may 
be: so I shall have to explain it is merely a way of 
impressing you with certain facts about Pee Wong and 
Pee Ming—for one thing, that they looked as much 
alike as two peas in a pod. Their dear slant eyes were 
set at the very same bias in their respective yellow 
faces, their quaint little knobs of noses were absolutely 
similar, and their prim rosebud mouths were identical. 
It was almost absurd; and one very much doubts 
whether even Mrs. Pee could tell them apart. But of 
course, they knew themselves apart, so there could never 
be a really serious mix up! And as for Q’s, if you only 
spell it q-u-e-u-e-s it will remind you what great pains 
they took in braiding their glossy, black hair into de¬ 
lightfully long pigtails, even braiding in some red 
string, since red is the Chinese color for good luck, 
and it might help them mind their difficult P’s and Q’s 
better. For things were getting really serious now, 
since nothing was left in the house to sell, and their 
father grumbled constantly about filling the empty 
stomachs of two such useless little persons. 

It was on the seventh day of his repeating these cross 
remarks that Mrs. Pee went for the last time to the 
Joss House to pray to the Joss about the trouble in 
store for her poor daughters. A Joss House is a Chi- 


135 


Mind Your P’s and Q’s 

nese temple, and a Joss is an idol—this particular pa¬ 
tron idol of Mrs. Pee’s was a little wooden fellow with 
painted red cheeks and staring green eyes and a very 
black mustache painted to droop in angry circles way 
down on his chest. To Mrs. Pee he was the only god 
in all America capable of helping her, so she gave a 
ten-cent-piece to the Chinese priest who had charge of 
the temple. 

“What?” said he, looking at it, “this trifling sum of 
money is hardly worth giving, silly woman!” 

“That is true,” she sighed, “it is miserably next-to- 
nothing, excellency, but it is absolutely all I have, and 
I hoped that you would deign to use it in waking up 
the honorable Joss so that he will listen to me.” 

It must be admitted that the priest was decidedly 
grumpy as he slipped the little coin up his silk sleeve: 
“Oh, well,” he snorted, “if it’s all you’ve got!” And 
he picked up a small bamboo stick and struck a large 
brass gong several times until the air was filled with 
the metallic boom! boom! boom! of it. Then he handed 
Mrs. Pee some joss sticks which she lighted; after 
which she knelt before the little idol and bowed three 
times, touching her forehead reverently upon the floor 
as she prayed: “Very venerable and glorious being, con¬ 
descend to protect my two insignificant daughters! O 
keep them from being sold as slave girls, most wor¬ 
shiped and all-powerful Joss!” Over and over she 
prayed this, lighting new joss sticks each time and con¬ 
tinuing to touch her poor forehead against the floor. 
As for the idol, he sat there with the usual bored ex¬ 
pression on his motionless wooden face, his painted 


136 Some Boys and Girls in America 

eyes never once blinked—not even when the frantic 
mother wept and wailed forlornly. 

“But dear me,” you cry, “are there temples like that 
in America? And priests? And idols?” 

Indeed there are, although thousands of good Chris¬ 
tian people, who.have never discovered America yet, sit 
calmly in their pews on Sunday morning and pray most 
earnestly : 

“Our Father who art in Heaven 
Hallowed be Thy name, 

Thy Kingdom come, 

Thy will be done 
On earth . . 

But I know our Father in Heaven must often sigh 
at our slowness in doing His will on earth and helping 
His Kingdom to come right around the corner here 
in our own America where Mrs. Pee is crying out her 
very heart. 

But some of us have discovered America, as you 
know by this time, and it was owing to our Chinese 
Mission that Pee Wong and Pee Ming were able to 
mind their P’s and Q’s successfully a week later on a 
morning when their father had announced at breakfast 
that that very day he planned to sell them to a certain 
man for ten dollars apiece. “It’s dirt cheap for you,” 
he groaned, “but I’m tired of feeding your big, hungry 
stomachs.” 

“No, no, master,” cried Mrs. Pee, “the gods will not 
permit this selling; I have prayed to the Joss many 


Mind Your P’s and Q’s 137 

times about this, and given all my money, so I think 
he will protect them—” 

“Nonsense!” leered the head of the Pees, “what 
should an inner-apartment-female like you know about 
America? There isn’t a god anywhere strong enough 
to keep me from selling my own useless brats if I want 
to, you silly pig of a woman 1” 

An hour later Mrs. Pee quietly smuggled the little 
girls out of the door and they were creeping along the 
narrow streets of Chinatown toward a friend’s house, 
where they could hide in safety, when suddenly they 
saw their father slouching in a doorway ahead of them. 

“Hurry! Hurry!” sobbed Pee Ming, dashing down 
a side street. 

“Wait for me! Wait for me!” wailed Pee Wong, 
tagging along after her as fast as she could. 

It was in turning a corner suddenly that they bumped 
straight into our missionary, who caught them in her 
arms to keep them from falling, and exclaimed: “Tag, 
you’re it! Whatever makes you dash around corners 
like that, my dears ?” 

Breathlessly they told her their sad tale, how that 
very day their father was planning to sell them for 
opium money. . . . 

“But that’s altogether against the law,” the pleasant 
lady said sternly, “I will notify the police, my dears, 
and you mustn’t cry another drop—just come to the 
mission with me; you’ll be perfectly safe, and I’ll go 
and bring your mother to you, too.” 

Of all surprises that mission was the crowning joy! 
Never had they dreamed of playing games on the roof 


138 Some Boys and Girls in America 

of any building, especially on the very day they feared 
they might be sold. Yet here they were playing “Fol¬ 
low the Leader” in the merriest possible fashion with 
dozens of other Chinese children. No wonder that 
when their mother called for them they were full of 
news: 

“Mother,” cried Pee Ming, “that red-white-and-blue- 
thing-with-stars is the flag of this land called America, 
and when somebody holds it up in the air we must all 
stand with our arms poked out toward it and say long 
American words at it—” 

“I know some of those words,” interrupted Pee 
Wong, proudly, “listen, mother, they sound like this: 
‘I pledge allegiance—’ ” 

“And mother,” Pee Ming broke in excitedly, “there’s 
a God in America who made the whole world, and 
China, too. He’s not any little wooden joss that you 
can see, mother; these little Chinese children here have 
been telling us.” 

You can see for yourself that the Mission seemed 
entirely too good to be true. But it was true! And 
the police lost no time in warning Mr. Pee that he was 
not free to sell his own daughters even if he wanted 
to, and that he would surely be arrested if he made the 
least attempt to dispose of them. So he grumbled and 
growled, until a certain December evening when there 
was a Christmas entertainment at our mission. How 
I wish you could have been there beside Mr. Pee to 
watch the story of Bethlehem enacted by little Chinese 
shepherds squatting on a green cheesecloth hillside with 
little Chinese angels announcing the birth of the 


Lighting the Chinese Lantern 


139 



Pee Ming and Pee Wong were so like each other 
They probably puzzled even their mother! 

Every once in a while Somebody Terribly Important calls the 
Chinese “the Yellow Peril.” But that is hardly fair, for you only 
have to look at these adorable twins to realize what the American 
Flag plus the American Bible can do to serve and serve such nice 
yellow families as the Pees.. Not perils but pearls of great price 
they are, and Anybody Terribly Un-Important who starts out to 
discover America will please begin by lighting his Chinese lantern 
in order not to overlook the pearls in dark corners! 









Not long ago there were eight-five joss-houses in Cali¬ 
fornia, but the Chinese do not put as much faith in a 
wooden god as formerly. Why? 


Mind Your P’s and Q’s 141 

Saviour to them, while a very Chinese Mary sat near 
by holding a small Chinese baby in her arms. 

As for Mr. Pee, he sat there with eyes only for Pee 
Ming and Pee Wong, two little Chinese angels whose 
special duty was to enter saying: “Behold, we bring 
you glad tidings of good things which shall be to all 
people, for unto you is born this day a Saviour who is 
Christ the Lord. ,, 

Nothing had ever been said which went so directly 
to Mr. Pee’s poor, tired, wicked heart: “I guess my girls 
make fine angels/’ he whispered proudly to Mrs. Pee. 
But little he dreamed that this startling new pride in 
them would turn his little daughters into real guardian 
angels, keeping him away from opium dens forever. 
It almost seems as if this little poem was written about 
him: 


“God’s angels, dear, have six great wings 
Of silver and of gold, 

Two round their heads and two round their hearts 
And two round their feet they fold. 

But the angel of a man I know 
Has just two hands, so small — 

Yet they’re more strong than six gold wings 
To save him from a fall.” 


XI 


SECTOR SOMBRERO’S SPECTACLES 

S ENOR SOMBRERO wove hats for a living—and 
although his real name was not Sombrero at all, 
yet everybody in that little Mexican town called them 
“the sombrero family,” for their small adobe house 
opened off from the roadway, and any time of night 
or day you could look inside and see their twinkling 
fingers plaiting strands of straw, which made a rustling 
sound like wind blowing through dry grasses. Even 
little Ferdinando, who was only five, had caught the 
knack of braiding, and our missionary thought that he 
had rarely seen such a crowded roomful as squatted on 
the earthen floor on the day of his visit. 

“I tell you how it is,” he began, smiling. “Your job 
in town is covering the outsides of people’s heads, while 
my job is filling the insides of those same heads with 
some new ideas about God.” 

“Senor Americano, he make the grand joke,” smiled 
the whole sombrero family, with a flash of their white 
teeth and much snapping of their fine dark eyes. So 
the missionary knew that he had won their first atten¬ 
tion, and explained a little more about his task in 
Mexico: how he came to bring a Book to every Mexi¬ 
can and teach them how to learn the way to God. 
Whereupon from one pocket he took his Bible and 
142 


Senor Sombrero’s Spectacles 143 

from another pocket he took his eye-glasses which he 
propped upon his nose exactly as you and I have often 
seen men do. Then above the never-ceasing rustle of 
the straw he lifted up his voice and read them of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Never before had anybody ever 
read a single word inside the four walls of that house, 
and they rather liked the rise and fall of his mellow 
voice, not to mention the stories themselves. When 
it was time to go, he saw their interest and offered to 
leave the Book for them to read on other days. Senor 
Sombrero rose and bowed politely, saying never a word 
about the fact that no one in the family could read or 
write at all. For instantly the sly old fellow had con¬ 
cocted a scheme in his mind which he considered very 
clever, namely, to sell the Book in secret and keep the 
money for a gay time when the next feast day should 
come along. 

Now the truth of the matter is that Senor Sombrero 
already knew a thing or two about these books called 
Bibles, since once he had heard a Catholic priest saying 
how all hope of heaven was lost forever to any man 
who dared to read such wicked heresies. It hardly 
seemed quite safe to keep such a book in the house 
over night, but he resolved to sell it secretly the next 
day when he carried his new pile of hats to market. 

But like many another father in the world, he reck¬ 
oned without taking his son into account, and Rafaelo 
was laying deep plans all his own! For Rafaelo had 
liked the stories in the Bible. No sooner had he heard 
the rise and fall of the Americano’s voice reading how 
the Lord had called four fishermen to leave their nets 


144 Some Boys and Girls in America 

than he had painted in his mind the picture of a sky- 
blue sea with rippling waves, with four tanned fisher¬ 
men hauling their brown nets up on the yellow sands. 
. . . He longed to hear the rest of the story, and wished 
with all his heart that his father only had some spec¬ 
tacles so that he could read aloud to them that very 
night. For the strange part of this story is that when 
Rafaelo saw our missionary put on glasses he became 
convinced that no one could read without spectacles, 
and that therefore—of course!—anybody could read 
with spectacles! And his problem instantly became to 
find spectacles at once, before there should be time to 
sell the Bible, for full well he knew that his father 
would sell the very roof above their heads if any one 
would buy it. 

So that afternoon Rafaelo ran away to the plaza, 
the little open square in town where the “evangelista” 
has his stall. Perhaps you do not know that an evan- 
gelista is a public letter-writer, a man in any Spanish 
town who earns his living by writing letters for the 
ignorant people who can neither read nor write, them¬ 
selves. Rafaelo felt no least surprise to see propped 
on the evangelista’s nose a pair of spectacles. This 
was as he had fully expected: any one who read must 
have them! Up he sauntered to the stall, wondering 
how in the world to state his errand. 

‘‘Well, thou small tongue-tied bit of skin and bones,” 
chuckled the idle letter-writer, “dost thou desire my 
services, perhaps? A letter to thy cold-hearted lady¬ 
love, no doubt, ha! ha!” 

‘Til tell you how it is,” Rafaelo confided, and with 


Senor Sombrero’s Spectacles 145 

many polite protestations of friendship asked to borrow 
the evangelista’s spectacles for over night. 

But you should have seen this person’s high disgust: 
“Well, by all the saints!” he exclaimed. “May my 
tongue drop out of my mouth and my fingers forget 
how to hold a pen, if I ever heard anything so utterly 
bold and disrespectful before! Just tell me, thou sly 
bit of impertinence, whatever dost thou want with the 
spectacles of a scholar? Bah! Thou vile little wretch, 
wait till I tweak thy ear and slap thy face—borrow my 
glasses, indeed! I’ll teach thee! Wait!” 

He grabbed across his stall to catch the little fellow ,* 
but naturally Rafaelo took to his heels and ran. Then 
all over again he began wondering where he could pos¬ 
sibly find spectacles, since the only other person in town 
who owned a pair was the American senor himself. 
He knew perfectly where this missionary lived and in 
five minutes was poking his head inside the open door. 
And there on the table lay the spectacles in plain sight! 
With his heart beating like a trip hammer he tiptoed 
into the room, clutched the glasses, then ran home as 
if all the missionaries in Mexico were chasing him! 

But when he reached his pink adobe house he saw 
his mother gathering two sticks from the door-yard 
with which she lifted the Bible, and very gingerly car¬ 
ried it out into the yard where his sisters were lighting 
a bonfire. 

“Wait!” screamed Rafaelo excitedly, “Oh, I pray 
thee do not burn the Book, my mother. See, I have 
some bits of glass so we can read the stories for our¬ 
selves.” 


146 Some Boys and Girls in America 

“Do be still, poor little Rafaelo,” cried his mother, 
shuddering. ‘‘Evidently thou hast not heard that he 
who reads this wicked book can never go to heaven, and 
that the blessed saints are much displeased with any 
one who even touches it. It seems the priest has told 
thy father this repeatedly, and to-day when he told us 
—ah me, we can’t burn so dangerous a Book soon 
enough—” and she poked the fire into a splendid blaze, 
whereupon the pages of the Bible curled up at the edges 
as the little flames went licking across them. Rafaelo 
stood there forlornly watching the blaze, clutching his 
stolen spectacles hopelessly. Then, in the midst of this 
silent watching, strode his father like a thunderclap! 

“You idiots!” he raged. “You crazy women crea¬ 
tures! Don’t I dare to turn my back ten minutes? 
What do I find you doing? Burning the Book, eh? 
What, have you no sense at all? Why, I could have 
sold it to some Protestant for good silver money. But 
no, I have a family of senseless pigs, of foolish idiots. 
Bah! I shall shake you all for this!” 

“But you would not have dared touch the dreadful 
Book,” cried Rafaelo’s mother, “it was you, yourself, 
that told us what the priest said of its dangers—” 

But Senor Sombrero continued to rage and rave, he 
shook them all ferociously and boxed their ears—but 
when he shook poor Rafaelo the spectacles fell clatter¬ 
ing to the ground. 

“Ah-ha!” he cried, picking them up. And instantly 
Rafaelo knew that his father would sell them instead 
of the Bible now burned to ashes; and of all the boys 


Through Rafaelo’s Eyes 147 



If you could see things through Sehor Sombrero’s Spectacles 
how differently life would look to you—with no school or church 
or Bible to give you a far vision. The lovely part about this 
story is that all over Mexico we have Americanos of our very 
own who, at this very moment, are sitting in shady patios, telling 
the Old, Old Story to other sombrero families. 





Sisters in the pink adobe house look like little old 
ladies with their skirts reaching clear to the ground, 
each with a quaint blue rebosa over her head. 



Senor Sombrero’s Spectacles 149 

in Mexico he was the most unhappy. Moreover, this 
sadness lasted a full week. 

Meanwhile our missionary was also feeling sad and 
lost without his spectacles. He hunted high and he 
hunted low, he ransacked his memory, but nowhere 
could he locate them. Unfortunately there was no 
place within a hundred miles where he could buy an¬ 
other pair, and not a word could he read without them! 
So imagine his surprise and joy when Senor Sombrero 
solved the difficulty by paying him a visit one morning 
and offering to sell him a pair of spectacles. It did not 
take him half a minute to recognize them as his own. 

“Where did you find them?” he inquired joyfully. 

“Indeed I cannot say, Senor. That boy of mine, the 
little Rafaelo, he brought them to me hoping fool¬ 
ishly that they would give me the proper understanding 
to read your Bible—I, who do not know one letter from 
another! Rafaelo is a dreamer of dreams, Senor, we 
do not take him seriously. But since the spectacles are 
indeed your own, I will sell them to you for a mere 
pittance; just name your own price! 

So the missionary bought back his own glasses, and 
that very day—knowing that Senor Sombrero was still 
in town—he hurried away to find the little dreamer of 
dreams, for it must be said that here was one person 
who took Rafaelo seriously. Rafaelo willingly told the 
whole story of his certainty that one only needed spec¬ 
tacles to read a Bible, but how when once the spec¬ 
tacles were obtained the Bible was burned. 

“But as for me, Senor,” said Rafaelo, “I am not 
afraid, for I know a thing or two about the priest, how 


150 Some Boys and Girls in America 

he plays off on us about the saints doing this and that 
to us unless we pay him money for indulgences and 
candles and prayers. Bah, and he can hardly read and 
write himself, that priest! You see, he has no spec¬ 
tacles !” 

Then and there a new day dawned for Rafaelo when 
he learned that reading does not consist in looking 
through bits of glass. He found that he himself could 
learn to read: letter by letter he mastered the alphabet 
and to-day—well, to-day they call Rafaelo “Senor 
Sombrero’s Spectacles” because his father will sit by 
the hour while Rafaelo reads the Bible aloud. And not 
only his father listens, but Mercedes, and Cristobel, 
and Ascencione: indeed the whole Sombrero family 
listens as Rafaelo’s voice rises and falls above the cease¬ 
less rustling of the straw for new sombreros. 


XII 


A STAR IN THE MILKY WAY 

ALFONSO would have told you disdainfully that 
he had a soul above selling milk! To him, this 
having a route was the stupidest thing in the world. 
Even the donkey soon memorized the ins and outs of 
those little, narrow streets, where housewives were for¬ 
ever poking their heads out of doorways to see if it 
were really Alfonso whenever they heard the patter of 
donkey’s footsteps or the clatter of tin cans clashing 
together musically. If it was Alfonso, he would be 
marching at the donkey’s head; and almost the only 
pleasure he ever got out of having a route was bickering 
with these housewives all along the way, over the big¬ 
ness of the tin measures they brought out to be filled 
and the fact that so much extra milk would certainly 
cost them thus and so. 

“Nonsense!” these individuals would say crossly, 
“is your milk so much better than anybody’s else that 
you must cheat a poor woman out of her last cent? 
When your milk’s half water, anyway, you ought to be 
grateful that I buy it at all!” 

“Now, by all the saints, but you insult me unjustly,” 
Alfonso would cry indignantly, “I swear that not a 
drop of water has ever touched my milk—you only 
have to look at it lying in that extra large tin measure 
of yours; may my eyes drop out of my head if I ever 
151 


152 Some Boys and Girls in America 

saw milk of a finer color, half cream it is—rich, yel¬ 
low cream, woman! And yet you insult me by calling 
it watered. Such is life! And you talk of cheating 
when your measure is half again as big as anybody's 
else!” 

It was in bickerings like this that Alfonso enlivened 
the monotony of his route along those narrow Cuban 
streets, and even the little donkey soon learned just 
where to stop so that the two big cans fastened to his 
saddle could be tilted over to fill the vessels, big and 
small, which were brought out for that purpose from 
dim patios indoors. For this was none of your mod¬ 
ern American dairy companies, with milk sealed up in 
scientifically sanitary bottles and delivered at your 
door in the wee small hours of the morning before 
ever you yourself are dreaming of cream in your 
breakfast coffee. Alfonso's was the way in which 
milk was circulated in Cuba, where on any day you 
really might manage to bargain Alfonso into selling it 
a whole cent cheaper—provided your tongue were only 
long enough and sharp enough. Now, it happened 
that along Alfonso's route was a certain house into 
which Americans had lately moved; so, with an eye to 
business, Alfonso jerked the donkey's tail and yelled 
a lusty “Whoa, there!" on the very morning following 
their first appearance on the street. 

You would not have supposed that any milkman in 
the world could have executed so elaborate and beguil¬ 
ing a flourish as Alfonso made in bowing to the Ameri¬ 
can lady—sweeping his hat to the very ground, he 
said: “Senora, permit me to recommend the perfec- 


A Star in the Milky Way 153 

tions of my milk! Straight from the most distin¬ 
guished and ornamental cows in all Cuba, Senora.” 

“Oh, I have no doubt they are highly ornamental,” 
she laughed, “but I don’t care nearly as much about 
how they dress up the appearance of the landscape as 
about the way the germs in the milk may affect my 
baby. So what have you got to say about germs ?” 

It must be admitted that Alfonso had never so much 
as heard of germs before, but being a tactful soul, de¬ 
sirous to please, he replied: “Put your mind at rest, 
Senora, I can deliver the milk either with or without 
germs as best suits the small infant. State your pref¬ 
erence, and I am at your service.” 

“Oh!” laughed the Senora, “with or without germs, 
eh? You certainly are obliging! And now tell me, 
how often do you sterilize your milk cans?” 

Poor Alfonso, this was too much! Little he knew 
whether this thing-called-sterilize was bird, fish, flesh 
or fowl, so he humbly begged an explanation; and, 
later on, rode away from the mission door a wiser boy, 
although still vastly mystified. What a lot of trouble 
she expected him to take; boiling tin cans and remov¬ 
ing germs. “If ever she buys of me, double shall she 
pay!” he declared to the donkey, who flapped his ears 
approvingly. 

The next morning he returned to the mission, his 
brown face beaming. “Senora,” he vowed, “I swear 
by all the saints that half the night have I sat up killing 
off the unfortunate germs lurking in the milk from 
my so ornamental cows. Therefore now the small 
Americano infant may drink it with complete safety!” 


154 Some Boys and Girls in America 

“Oh, you gay deceiver!” smiled the lady, much 
amused, “it grieves me to disappoint you, but no milk 
to-day.” 

“I am in your hands, merciful lady,” cried Alfonso 
cheerfully. And after that he called each day, although 
never could he persuade her to buy even a drop of his 
milk. But there was a special lure about poking his 
head inside that doorway, where curious sights were 
to be seen: a dozen little children contentedly sitting 
as still as mice making black marks on white paper, 
receiving the thing called “ an education.” And some¬ 
times when education threatened to grow too tiresome, 
those dozen silent children became as noisy as they 
pleased, scampering around playing games. 

You can see for yourself that all his other custo¬ 
mers put together could not possibly equal the charm 
of this house where the lady did not buy, but where 
such bewildering things were going on. Indeed, he 
talked so much about this thing called an education that 
his little sisters and brothers fell to wishing that they 
did not live way out upon a lonely farm with only or¬ 
namental cows for company! 

Then one day Alfonso began looking at the don¬ 
key’s back as if measuring the length and the breadth 
of it in the spots between the milk cans. “Juanita,” 
he called, “also Tommasito, and thou, little Concep- 
cione, hop up on the donkey’s back and come visit the 
place called a school.” 

You may be sure they hopped up! 

And a little later on, when the missionary lady heard 
the familiar clatter of Alfonso’s milk-cans and ex- 


Tailing the Donkey! 155 



Cuba is often called “The Pearl of the Antilles” because it is 
such a perfectly beautiful island, where the green palms are so 
very green, the blue sea so very turquoise, the yellow sands so 
very gleaming, and the white waves that boom ceaselessly on the 
shore so very foamy, as if they had just been scrubbed up into 
soapsuds! 

Probably Alonzo’s family had lots of fun on their way home 
from our school admiring parrots, flamingoes, and crocodiles— 
although at present Concepcione has her eye fixed on a star in 
the Milky Way and Tommasito is mastering the geographical fact 
that Cuba is shaped like an alligator (with two million people 
living on its back). 








Cuba may look like an alligator on the map, but ac¬ 
tually it is one of the prettiest places you ever saw. 




A Star in the Milky Way 157 

pected to see his beaming face poked in at the door¬ 
way, lo and behold, four faces appeared! Three of 
them very, very shy, and scared, and curious. 

But after that first visit they came regularly each 
morning; indeed, Alfonso had to reverse his entire 
route in order to deliver them at school at the begin¬ 
ning instead of in the middle of his milky way. But, 
just as on dark summer nights you may have seen 
bright stars light up the Milky Way in heaven, so that 
small school began to shine along Alfonso’s route. 
With every pint of milk poured into small tin dippers 
he made that star gleam in the monotony of other 
people’s routine lives. Instead of old-time bickerings 
about one cent more or less, there would be glowing 
accounts of how those Protestants were doing thus and 
and so in town. 

“I tell you what,” Alfonso would say to some dis¬ 
gruntled mother with a group of noisy children squab¬ 
bling in the patio, “if you’d only send them around to 
the American Senora’s school for an education, you’d 
be amazed at the improvement in them. I give you 
my word that from day to day my own mother hardly 
recognizes Juanita and Tommasito and Concepcione 
when I bring them home on the donkey’s back, so im¬ 
proved are they becoming.” 

Naturally these recommendations had their subtle 
effect and one by one new scholars began to crowd the 
senora’s school, until her husband was forced to write 
home to our churches in America: “Dear Friends— 
You will be delighted to hear of the marked increase 
in attendance at our mission this year. It will no 


158 Some Boys and Girls in America 

longer be possible for my wife to hold the school in 
our own home as formerly, for we are already crowded 
to the very door-jambs, and have a long waiting list 
of children desiring to attend, only we cannot possibly 
squeeze in another pupil! This means that money is 
needed at once for a school building. Oh, I earnestly 
pray that you will not wait to fill this crying need, for 
enthusiasm is high just now; indeed, the Catholic 
priests are frightened enough at our success to forbid 
their people to attend either our school or our church. 
But, with no other school within a hundred miles, 
these warnings have little effect, and my church ser¬ 
vices are packed. One of my best volunteer helpers 
is an enthusiastic young fellow who has a milk route— 
utterly ignorant he is, yet with untold influence among 
the families he meets along his route. Indeed, he’s a 
star in the milky way, exactly as the Prophet Daniel 
said: ‘They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of 
the firmament; and they that turn many to righteous¬ 
ness as the stars forever and ever.’ ” 


XIII 


noah’s rainbow 

S UPPOSE we call him Noah; not that it was his 
real name, for he lived fully twelve years of his 
life before he ever heard of such persons and things 
as Noah and the ark and the flood. But, as a matter of 
fact, his actual name is one of those Alaskan words so 
difficult to repeat that the person responsible for this 
story neglected to tell it to me; however, since “Noah” 
fits him, Noah let him be, pro tern! You may even 
remember him longer under that title. 

All his life Noah had been familiar with water in 
various shapes and fashions; there was, for instance, 
the water in rivers where one went canoeing for sal¬ 
mon, there was also water in the ocean, where whales 
and walruses and seals could be caught; moreover, 
there was water that dropped down in waterfalls, and 
other water that dropped down from the sky in the 
form of rain. Also there was frozen water in winter, 
to be skated on and walked on; and when you became 
too hungry you knocked a hole in this sheet of ice to 
fish patiently through the hole until you caught a 
wriggling breakfast-dinner-and-supper. All this Noah 
knew about water. But on the day when he was 
brought to our orphanage he knew nothing about water 
in pipes to run indoors all ready to be used for cooking 
and drinking and washing. It was so plain to be seen 
159 


160 Some Boys and Girls in America 

how ignorant he was that an older, wiser orphan-boy 
took him in charge and was about to initiate Noah into 
the doubtful bliss of his first bath. 

There stood the huge white tub, like some valley of 
frozen snow into which ran a pipe from which surpris¬ 
ing water gushed forth. Noah stood, simply fascin¬ 
ated, beside the older, wiser orphan-boy. Then, 
through the open doorways of the orphanage sounded 
the voice of the matron calling. . . . 

“Look here, Noah,” said the older, wiser orphan, 
“they want me downstairs a minute, so you just stay 
here and watch the tub till I get back, will you?” 

“Uh-huh!” promised Noah, for what did it matter 
to him whether orphans came or orphans went so long 
as the gushing waters continued to gush? Obediently 
he stood and watched the tub become one-quarter full 
. . . then half full . . . then three-quarters full 
. . . then altogether full . . . then more than alto¬ 
gether full, whereupon the extra water began to spill 
over on the floor and swish around aimlessly. How 
was Noah to know whether this was right or wrong, 
never having seen a bathtub in action before ? He only 
wished he might escape before the puddles reached his 
gloriously shined new shoes, but had he not faithfully 
promised to watch the tub? Well, he would prove that 
he was of the type to stick to his post even if he 
drowned for it. And, indeed, he began to wonder if 
it might not soon be a matter of drowning, if the flood 
continued to overflow so alarmingly. Little waves be¬ 
gan to lap his precious shoes, but he nobly refused to 
budge a single inch, although he determined that if 


Noah’s Rainbow 


161 


this were the thing-called-a-bath, decidedly it should 
be his last one! Events were going rapidly from bad 
to worse when the bathroom door burst open and the 
older, wiser orphan returned. 

You really should have seen his face! “I told you 
to watch the tub!” he shouted, above the gurgle of the 
pipes. 

“But I am watching it!” groaned poor Noah, waving 
his hand to indicate the brimming tub and the pool of 
water in which he was uncomfortably marooned. 

“You're simply hopeless!” the older, wiser boy re¬ 
marked sarcastically, as he waded over to turn off the 
faucet, and so stop the deluge; a simple little attention 
which poor Noah would have gladly performed himself 
had he understood its instant effect on the flood. 

After much mopping, and endless wringing out of 
soaked towels, Noah's bath receded until the dry land 
of the bath-room floor was restored. But for days and 
days the other orphans quietly smiled up their sleeves 
when they passed that door and remembered the new¬ 
comer's dauntless heroism in standing by his own 
deluge, whatever the result might be! 

It was only natural that speaking of floods should 
lead them to speaking of rainbows. “We really ought 
to put a rainbow of promise in the sky to show Noah 
that there’ll never be another flood,” they laughed. 
Whereupon one orphan-girl, quick as a flash, pointed to 
the American flag: “There it is!” she cried, “a red, 
white and blue rainbow!” So they told Noah all about 
America, that wonderful Christian place where mis¬ 
sionaries came from, and where unknown but friendly 


162 Some Boys and Girls in America 

church members cared enough for faraway Alaskan 
orphans to provide this home for them. Do you won¬ 
der that ever afterwards Noah pictured America as 
some heaven, inhabited by angels with red, white and 
blue wings ? The day he learned to salute his rainbow 
flag there was no prouder boy in all Alaska, for he felt 
that he was doing all he could to honor America, that 
land God surely loved the best. 

“But no,” the missionary said convincingly, “God 
loves Alaska just as much!” 

“How can He?” Noah cried, “how can He love a 
dirty cabin like the one I lived in, where all of us were 
frightened about the evil spirits lurking here or there 
to harm us ? So foolish we were, teacher! Did I ever 
tell you how I was punished once for eating a bit of 
bear meat by mistake? Well, you must know that at 
the top of my father’s totem pole a bear was carved to 
show that the bear was the friendly protector of our 
family. And of course one doesn’t eat one’s friends, 
teacher. But alas, quite by mistake, I ate a piece of 
bear steak at a neighbor’s—and oh! how my father 
flogged me! My mother would not feed me for days, 
and poor old grandmother hung bits of red cloth 
around the doorway to appease any angry spirits whom 
the bears might send to punish us. Now, teacher, 
when people are as ignorant as that, how can the Lord 
God love Alaska?” 

“Listen, Noah,” said the missionary, opening his 
Bible and reading the reassuring story which the 
Saviour told long years ago on earth, about the shep¬ 
herd who had a hundred sheep, but one was lost. For, 


In Totem-Pole Land 


163 



A totem pole is really a family tree, a book of biography, 
showing at a glance what animals the family are supposed to 
have had for spirit ancestors—ravens are especially popular, and 
bears. 

When the Bible was translated into the Eskimo language the 
writers were very much handicapped because there are no sheep 
in Alaskan snowfields, so how could they translate: “Behold the 
Lamb of God ?” They had to make it read: “Behold God’s little 
Seal”—for the soft-eyed furry seals are as sweet and tender to 
the Eskimos as lambs are to the rest of us. 










Years ago, when the United States bought Alaska for 
$7,000,000 people called it ‘‘Seward’s Folly.” But to-day 
the salmon fishing alone pays our government $10,000,000 
every year. 




Noah’s Rainbow 


165 


curiously enough, the ninety-nine, all safe and com¬ 
fortable in the Christian fold, could not possibly inter¬ 
est him as much as that little lost sheep wandering 
around up in Alaska . . . doing foolish, aimless 
things, longing to' be safe. Up through all the icy 
darkness, in the teeth of blinding blizzards, through 
great drifts of driven snow went the Good Shepherd, 
hunting that little lost sheep. And when he found it, 
he carried it back to the safety of the fold in his own 
arms. 

“Ah, me!” sighed Noah happily, “how much He 
cares! I wish every one in all Alaska knew God cares!” 

“I wish so, too,” the teacher murmured, as his eyes 
looked east, west, north and south across the vast snow 
fields toward places where countless heathen families 
are still groping in the darkness, waiting for you and 
for me to send them—northern lights! “For the en¬ 
trance of Thy Word giveth light unto the simple .” 


XIV 


AN ORPHAN AND THE BOTTLED COW 

A SEED is such a pleasantly unexpected little thing. 
^^All dried up, you know; and shriveled, as if it 
were absolutely good for nothing, but along comes the 
superintendent of the orphanage and shows you how to 
make a neat little hole in the ground where you are to 
hide the seed away. You think it must be just another 
of these new delightful Christian ways, for certainly 
you never did this kind of thing back in that icy home 
where the ground was always covered with snow. So 
just as he shows you, you bury your seed, and pat the 
brown earth over it lovingly, then sprinkle it with 
water. After which you go indoors to eat your sup¬ 
per. For there is this to be said about orphanages; 
they feed you three times a day as if they knew that 
orphans had stomachs, big empty stomachs, needing 
the very food they cooked in that surprising kitchen. 
Queer! You had not known before that houses ever 
had extra rooms made specially to cook in! Back in 
your old ice igloo was not the cooking always done 
over a little open fire right in the middle of the floor? 
And was not the blue smoke always choking you so 
that your eyes watered and your throat smarted? 

Meditating on how pleasant it is to have orphanages 
with kitchens and plenty of food for hungry orphan 
boys, you go to bed. And this, too, is another delight- 
166 


An Orphan and the Bottled Cow 167 

ful thing. For in that far-off igloo, beds were ledges 
of ice around the wall with bear skins over them, and 
they were hard enough to poke you in all the wrong 
places. Surely a soft white bed is a very Christian 
thing to give an orphan, you think as you jump into it; 
then out you jump—remembering to thank the Lord 
God for orphanages and kitchens and food and beds 
and, oh yes, for little brown seeds, too. So that by the 
time you hop into bed again you are wondering about 
that seed you planted. Surely nothing can ever come 
out of anything so entirely dead-looking! 

But the next morning, bright and early, you rush 
out to see your hole and your seed; only, before you 
have done this satisfactorily an older orphan comes 
along: “Hey, there,” he calls, “whatever are you 
doing?” 

“Just digging up my own seed to see if anything’s 
happening to it,” you reply, as if this were the wisest 
of replies. But he thinks otherwise, and explains the 
wisdom about waiting a week for any results. Other¬ 
wise nothing will happen. Whereupon you sigh deeply 
at the great number of new Christian things that must 
be learned at orphanages. But even as you sigh you are 
walking indoors to eat breakfast: which makes up for 
all other disappointments. 

One day. Two days. Three days. Four days. 
And then a tiny green finger comes pointing up at you 
from your hole. 

“Look!” you cry excitedly, “look at what my seed 
is doing!” 

But ah me, the others have been growing seeds in 


168 Some Boys and Girls in America 

that orphanage garden too many seasons to grow ex¬ 
cited over your one tiny green shoot. But you love it! 
You kneel beside it whole hours at a time. You love 
the crinkly green leaves that begin unfolding into the 
air. You wonder if in all Alaska there is anything 
quite as wonderful as your dead brown seed changing 
into greenness as green as this. 

“Where did it all come from ?” you ask the superin¬ 
tendent. 

“From God,” he explains, and shows you plants and 
seed-pods, explaining about God’s earth and sun and 
rain. 

“Oh!” you cry, seeing that seeds are Christian 
things just as you supposed. Whereupon something 
that was dead in your own bleak little Alaskan heart 
wakes up, and where before you were a quiet, forlorn 
orphan you now become a bright, cheerful one. As 
if you too had been a brown seed now blooming into 
a real live plant. 

By this time, of course, like the others, you have 
planted whole rows of seeds, so that there can be veg¬ 
etables for hungry orphan stomachs next winter. You 
are so proud of those prim green shoots under your 
care that you brag about them at suppertime, which 
makes the matron remind you gently that others have 
fine gardens, too. 

“Y-yes!” you admit regretfully, wishing you were 
the only gardener in all Alaska. It would be so grand 
a feeling to have every hungry orphan depending on 
your vegetables all winter. 

“Some day maybe God and I will feed them all,” 


Introducing Mr. Raw Fish Eater 169 



It sounds as if it might be very cold to live in an igloo, with 
walls made of blocks of ice and floors, beds and tables, etc., all 
ice, too. But there are always plenty of bearskins on which to 
lie, and in the corner there are even little fur bags, one for each 
child, with some bones inside—for every year, when the long 
winter night is over a new bone is put into each bag, so that if 
anybody wants to know how old he is he merely has to count 
his bones! 

Did you know that Eskimo means Raw Fish Eater? 








To-morrow, let us hope that he will be bear steak for 
some little Raw Fish Eater, and a new fur suit, also! 






An Orphan and the Bottled Cow 171 

you whisper to yourself. But little did you dream just 
then of Sonia: Sonia who could horn her way through 
any kind of a fence, and not only trample down fresh¬ 
growing plants, but even deliberately chew them up. 
And no matter how many orphans chased her away 
yesterday, to-day she calmly sneaks in somehow or 
other—and woe to all vegetables then! 

You and Sonia, therefore, are not friends. You 
would have liked to weep over Sonia’s lack of vision 
—it seemed impossible that any Christian cow could so 
recklessly destroy sacred places—places where you and 
God were making earth and sun and air feed orphans! 
For whole weeks you went to bed to dream only of 
Sonia, and one day you asked what the Bible meant 
when it said, “Love your enemies”—could it possibly 
mean that you were to love Sonia? 

“No,” said the dear House Mother kindly, “no, a 
cow is not a person, you see, so I feel sure you are 
free to think whatever you wish about her wickedness.” 

“Then I don’t see why the Lord God ever let Sonia 
be born!” you raged; and it was then the Matron 
asked, “Were you remembering Sonia’s milk?” How 
day after day she had patiently been giving the or¬ 
phans quarts and quarts of sweet fresh milk ? Ah, me, 
you had forgotten Sonia’s usefulness; and for days you 
curbed your hatred of her. 

But at last the superintendent himself saw that 
something must be done to save the farm from Sonia’s 
ravages, and the thing he did was so proper a solution 
that you marveled at his wisdom. For, of course, in 
winter a great deal of meat would be needed to feed 


172 Some Boys and Girls in America 

so many children, and one can not run around to cor¬ 
ner butcher shops in Alaska for the simple reason that 
there are none! So, if meat was going to be needed, 
it must be cooked and bottled by the orphans in the 
cooking class, and that is how they came to bottle 
Sonia! The orphan gardeners whooped with sheer de¬ 
light ; the -orphan cooking girls smiled wisely. 

And that next winter when you felt even more at 
home and happier in that orphanage, you used to think 
it was the pleasantest sight in the world to see a whole 
tableful of orphans eating Sonia thankfully; and I al¬ 
most think a certain little poem was singing itself into 
your glad Alaskan heart: 

“It is very nice to think 
The world is full of meat and drink, 

With little children saying grace 
In every Christian kind of place.” 


XV 

LITTLE “PICTURES” HAVE BIG EARS 

OW I have no doubt that all your life you may 
have heard this proverb spelled another way: little 
p-i-t-c-h-e-r-s have big ears. I don’t know much about 
pitchers—either cream pitchers or water pitchers—but 
I am almost positive that none of them have as big 
ears as I have, and in any case they really can’t hear as 
much as I hear, since they generally spend half their 
lives on a pantry shelf, appearing in public only at 
meal-time, while I have spent all my life upon the liv¬ 
ing-room wall right with the family, until (for no 
reason at all) they banished me to the attic. 

It all came about because the family had the living- 
room walls newly papered, and somebody called an 
Interior Decorator said that it was more stylish nowa¬ 
days to have only one or two large pictures carefully 
placed on the walls, instead of a dozen little ones. So 
off I was bundled to the attic, where I was nearly 
heart-broken with humiliation and despair. 

For it isn’t as if I were an ordinary picture—there 
has always been something special about me: I can’t 
tell you exactly what it is, but I have known grown 
men to stand looking at me until tender little smiles 
would come dancing around their severe mustaches. 
As for the small children in that family, many and 
173 


174 Some Boys and Girls in America 

many a day have they stood on tiptoe to look at me 
with dear round wondering eyes, and their mother 
would have to tell them bedtime stories about me to 
satisfy their curiosity. Surely you are not surprised 
that such a picture had big ears; and just because I had 
always seemed to matter to everybody, it made it 
doubly hard to be banished so heartlessly. 

It was freezing cold in that attic all winter and 
piping hot all summer. I was forced to lie on my face 
where they had put me, and many a day I would won¬ 
der if this useless existence could possibly be all that 
life was to hold for me. Then one crisp October day 
the Lady of The House came upstairs with her Eldest 
Daughter, talking about some barrel. It seemed that 
their church was about to send this barrel down south 
to a mission school for negroes; and my owners had 
come up to the attic to collect a number of things they 
had abandoned themselves—outgrown clothes, cur¬ 
tains, shoes, etc. I was envying them the excitement 
of the trip, when suddenly the Eldest Daughter cried: 
“Oh, mother, look! Here’s that darling little old pic¬ 
ture you used to tell us stories about. Don’t you think 
we could send it down south?” 

“All right!” agreed the Lady of The House. And 
that’s how the most wonderful event in my whole life 
came to me. Maybe some pictures might be too snob¬ 
bish to enjoy being stuffed into a barrel and banged 
into a freight car where the motion of the train sent 
us all lurching right and left in the most harum- 
scarum fashion. But I was simply thrilled with the 


Little “Pictures” Have Big Ears 175 

adventure of it, for I think even then I knew that it 
wouldn’t be long before I could bring the same old 
tender wondering look into the eyes of people in this 
new place called “down south.” 

Sure enough, when our barrel was dumped on the 
front doorstep of that mission school, the teachers came 
running excitedly from all quarters. In no time at all 
they had pried open the lid and had begun diving 
down for the contents. It was such fun to hear their 
comments: “Oh, look—shoes! Dear old Aunt Sally 
won’t have to wear those totally worn out things she 
now limps around in!” “Look at these little aprons, 
will you? Such jolly bright ginghams and calicos— 
our girls will go wild over them!” But when they 
finally came to me there was a breathless little silence, 
then the Lady With The Golden Hair sighed: “How 
simply perfect! Let’s keep it for some very special 
little scholar.” 

“Yes, let’s!” agreed the others in a pleased chorus. 
So then I knew that I had come to the place where they 
would appreciate me, and I was content to wait pa¬ 
tiently in the school-room cupboard until that special 
little scholar deserved a present. 

But because I was tucked away there, I was not pre¬ 
pared for the shock when I first saw Topsy! I think 
she must have been the Topsy who “just growed,” and 
never had a proper up-bringing; but the big surprise 
to me was the color of her skin. Not that it actually 
mattered to me that she was black all over (although 
I had never dreamed that skins ever could be anything 


176 Some Boys and Girls in America 

but white all over) but for one little disappointing 
moment I did not see how my picture could possibly 
mean anything to her. But that was so foolish of me! 
For no sooner had I looked at myself than I saw that of 
all pictures in the world, I and I alone was meant for 
Topsy. 

But I fear I am a bit ahead of my story. For the 
truth of the matter is that Topsy was terribly stupid. 
Her fingers were all thumbs when it came to writing, 
and half the time her teacher discovered her holding 
her primer upside down without Topsy’s realizing why 
it was so hard to read all of a sudden. From my school¬ 
room cupboard I could hear the teacher laboring with 
her: “Oh Topsy,” she would beg each day after 
school, “if you would only try, dear! But look, your 
writing doesn’t stay on the line at all, it straggles off 
down the slate in the wildest way. So couldn’t you put 
your mind to it, Topsy, and try a whole lot harder?” 

“ ’Deed I will, Miss Mary, ma’am. To-morrow I’se 
gwine to try jess powerful hard to ’blige you. ’Deed 
I is. Guess you’se gwine to nearly bust with pride to 
see my writin’!” 

This way of talking sounded very curious to me in 
my cupboard, but I decided that of course children who 
can’t write are apt to be different from those who are 
properly educated; and it soon came to my ears that 
Topsy must actually be trying to improve. Still pretty 
poor at it; but trying. And Miss Mary was trying, 
too, so that the first thing anybody knew the Inspector 
arrived. You must spell him with a capital “I,” be- 


Little “Pictures” Have Big Ears 177 

cause he was such a solemn person with the eyes of an 
eagle, and not a thing did he overlook from A to Z; 
yet when he inspected the children’s slates, it was 
Topsy’s that he found the very best of all. 

“Um,” he murmured, “very neat, well-formed let¬ 
ters; even, too; keeps well on the ruled line. Very 
good. Very good.” 

So, after this stern gentleman had departed, and 
after all the other scholars had skipped home, Miss 
Mary took Topsy’s hand and said proudly: “Oh, 
Topsy, I’m so glad! I knew you could if you only 
tried hard enough. And now, so that you’ll always 
remember that it pays to keep on trying, I’m going to 
give you a little secret present to take home.” And 
she opened the cupboard door and handed me to 
Topsy. 

It was then, of course, that I had my big shock:— 
her very black skin and her very kinky hair. But it 
only lasted a minute, for Topsy looked at me with her 
big black eyes rolling round and round in utter aston¬ 
ishment as she cried: “Oh, Miss Mary, a picture! A 
sure enough picture like what the white folks hang on 
the wall! Oh, Miss Mary, I reckon there ain’t no little 
colored girl in town has got a picture!” 

You see, she just couldn’t get over it. So the only 
thing for Miss Mary to do was to go home with her 
and tell her where to hang her treasure. Topsy car¬ 
ried me clasped next her heart, and I couldn’t help but 
tell from the way it thumped that she was too excited 
for words. With every new thump I began loving her 


178 Some Boys and Girls in America 

all over again harder than ever; although I had my 
second shock when I saw the little log cabin that was 
her home. 

Such a ramshackle affair with the logs warped far 
enough apart in the most draughty fashion. The two 
rooms were cluttered up with all sorts of odds and 
ends, and there was neither carpet nor wall paper nor a 
sign of a curtain. Even Miss Mary looked sorry to 
see such an uninviting home; but she hung me over the 
fireplace where the light from the doorway fell on me 
just right, so that Topsy and her family could see me 
easily. But when the nail was in place and I was up 
there, the first thing Topsy did was to stand on tiptoe 
exactly as the children used to do in my other home up 
north, and Topsy—pointing—said: “Oh, Miss Mary, 
who am this lubly gent’man in my picture, wid all these 
lily-white chillens on his knee ?” 

“Why, it’s the Saviour, dear,” Miss Mary explained, 
telling her what I’d heard so often before about the 
day when Jesus was here among men and said: “Suffer 
the little children to come unto me and forbid them 
not.” 

And just like all the others, big and little, Topsy 
loved that story. But she stood on tiptoe a long while 
looking quietly at me, then she sighed forlornly: “I 
wish I’d been there, Miss Mary, but I reckon the likes 
of Him wouldn’t of had any use for the likes of me— 
so black and all.’” 

But Miss Mary pointed out a certain little child in the 
picture and said: “Look, Topsy—see how dark she 
is! I’m sure the Saviour loves to have you black all 


My! It Am Jess Lubly! 


179 



Reckon there nebber, nebber, nebber were any such a picture 
so powerful lubly as this one what the white folkses up norf 
done sent down souf for Topsy. Topsy, she jess look at it, an’ 
look at it, an’ look at it, like she nebber gwine to see nuff! 








Since other Topsies are probably studying hard, too, 
perhaps we might send a few more pictures down south. 






Little “Pictures” Have Big Ears 181 

over, dear, or else He would never, never, never have 
made you that way. I don’t suppose He even notices a 
little outside thing like color, but oh, how He does no¬ 
tice inside things like laziness and lack of helpfulness. 
I’m wondering what He’d think of any little negro 
girl in my school who never helped her mammy, whose 
home was cluttered up all day, when a broom could 
sweep the floor in a minute, and a little soap and water 
could wash the dirty dishes. . . .” 

“Yass’m, Miss Mary, ma’am,” sighed Topsy 
meekly. “I done learn all that in school.” 

So Miss Mary nodded gently, and asked how it 
looked to have a picture of the Saviour on the wall 
when everything else was so unworthy of Him. Topsy 
rolled her eyes and said she really hated to say, Miss 
Mary, please. And at once they started housecleaning! 
They washed and stacked the dishes in neat piles, they 
piled the sweet potatoes in one chip basket and the 
peanuts in another, they brushed the cobwebs from the 
corners, they scrubbed the furniture and mopped the 
floor and swept the hearth and did a dozen little jobs 
that turned that forlorn cabin from a dingy dungeon 
into a home sweet home. Then it was so late that Miss 
Mary had to hurry away, but Topsy and I were left 
alone together. And I don’t think she’d mind my tell¬ 
ing you how she came up very close and whispered: 

“Oh, Saviour, if you jess stays right on with me 
I’se gwine to keep this here cabin powerful neat and 
tidy, jess like Miss Mary done learn me how. Reckon 
there ain’t nebber been any pertikler reason for scrub¬ 
bing till You come along, Saviour. Help Topsy to 


182 Some Boys and Girls in America 

be an awful good girl now, Amen. Thank you 
kindly.” 

And if you could only see how she’s kept her prom¬ 
ise, and how the rest of her family love me, then you’d 
know that the place of all places where a little picture 
can be really happiest is in a little log cabin home way 
down south in Dixie. 


XVI 


NOT AS BLACK AS HE WAS PAINTED 

Tl/flSS AMANDA sighed. And whenever Miss 
^ Amanda sighed there was the tinkle of little 
black jet ornaments rising and falling on the yoke of 
her black taffeta dress. (Her second best dress, it was 
—put on in honor of Newton Fairfax’s return from 
college.) Her taffeta skirts were the dear old-fash¬ 
ioned kind that billowed around her like black silk 
waves, with herself as an island in the midst of them. 
But Miss Amanda liked them that way. She even 
liked to hear the little jet ornaments tinkle when she 
moved. But what she did not like, was to look through 
the honeysuckle vine and see Tubal leaning against the 
hitching-post. 

Tubal was black. Very black. Black from the 
crown of his head to the soles of his feet. And yet 
one wonders if he was as black as Miss Amanda 
painted him! 

“I reckon you never laid eyes on a boy as lazy as 
Tubal,” she was saying to the young man who was 
just home from college. “I reckon if I don’t call him, 
he’ll go on leaning against that hitching-post till the 
Day of Judgment, that’s all he’s good for: leaning 
. . . and forgetting. Tubal just naturally can’t re¬ 
member to do a single thing you ask him to do. If 
you say: ‘Tubal, go rake the lawn,’ he’ll say: ‘Yass, 
183 


184 Some Boys and Girls in America 

yass, Miss Amandy Miss, I’se gwine do it direckly!’ 
But he moons off into one of his day-dreams and that’s 
the end of the lawn. He’s a little black nuisance, and 
I’ve told his mammy a hundred times that if she 
doesn’t spank him and teach him better, I won’t have 
him ’round the place. Indeed I won’t! He’s just a 
lazy, good-for-nothing, the kind that will grow up into 
a perfect terror and land in jail as sure as my name’s 
Amanda Fairfax. Indeed he will!” 

Young Mr. Newton Fairfax suddenly became inter¬ 
ested enough to lean forward and peer through the 
honeysuckle vine, himself. For it isn’t every day in 
the year that you get a chance to see a lazy good-for- 
nothing who’s going to land in jail. Mr. Fairfax 
wanted to see how they looked in the middle of the 
wicked process. But he was disappointed, for Tubal 
did not look like anything in particular—except, of 
course, a pair of black legs, a pair of patched trousers, 
one rope suspender, and one very round, woolly head. 

“Is he getting any education, Aunt Amanda?” 
asked the young man just home from college. 

“Education?” gasped Miss Amanda, spreading her 
delicate white hands like peninsulas on the billowy 
black taffeta ocean, “Why, Newton, dear, it’s a right 
hard thing for even an ambitious negro to get an edu¬ 
cation in these parts, and I reckon no teacher living 
could teach Tubal anything. In one ear and out the 
other.” 

Mr. Fairfax laughed: “I’m going over to tackle this 
three-foot black terror for myself.” So he strolled 
down the porch steps toward the hitching post. 


Not as Black as He Was Painted 185 

“What you thinking about, Tubal?” he called to the 
small black statue leaning there. 

Tubal rolled the whites of his eyes in embarrass¬ 
ment : “Nuffin, Mistah Fairfax, sah! Ain’t nuffin in 
my head, ’deed there ain’t!” 

“Nonsense, you can’t tell m$ you weren’t painting 
a little dream in your mind’s eye. Come on now, 
'fess up!” 

Tubal rolled his eyes and squirmed: “Deed I’se not 
thinkin’ nuffin.” 

Mr. Fairfax sat down on a garden seat and regarded 
the boy who was going to be a terror some day: “A 
penny for your thoughts!” he smiled, and laid a bright 
new penny on the bench. 

Tubal looked at the penny. And the penny cer¬ 
tainly looked at him! Both longed to belong to one 
another, obviously, so Tubal plucked up a little more 
courage: “You’se sure enough gwine to laugh at me, 
Mistah Fairfax, sah, ’cause why I’se making believe I’se 
—no! ’deed, I can’t tell it! ’Deed I can’t! Not to you, 
Mistah Fairfax. ’Deed I can’t.” 

“Oh, come on!” ordered the young white gentleman. 

Tubal hitched up his one rope suspender, and swal¬ 
lowed bravely: “Well, I’se just makin’ believe that 
I’se—you! Only black—see? Yes, sah, makin’ be¬ 
lieve I’se you, only still black. Figurin’ out how I’d 
admire to go off to one of them fine colly [college] 
place where you-all goes to. Yes, sah, with a pile of 
books as high as the barn door! I’se just pretendin’ 
how my mammy she’d hold up her hands and holler: 
Tor de land sakes, if there ain’t my li’l Tubal settin’ 


186 Some Boys and Girls in America 

with all de udder fine scholards! And my sakes, if dat 
li’l colored kid of mine ain’t readin’ out of one of ’em 
books . . . oh, me! oh, my! readin’ jess as easy as de 
white folks read!’ So that’s what I’se moonin’ about, 
Mistah Fairfax, sah. I reckon I’se plumb foolish; I 
reckon there ain’t nebber been a colored boy could do 
such things as all that—-colly, and books, and all.” 

Young Mr. Fairfax grabbed Tubal excitedly by the 
arm and set him down on the seat by his side: ‘‘Tu¬ 
bal, my boy, I’m so proud of you I could eat you alive! 
For that’s a great dream, and what’s more, it’s the kind 
of a dream that can come true, for I know of a certain 
colored boy who’s done every one of the things you are 
aching to do.” 

Tubal grinned bashfully from ear to ear. “Reckon 
mebbe he ain’t poor like me.” 

“Poorer!” said Mr. Fairfax. 

“You don’t say! Well, reckon likely he had one of 
them colly places right close by.” 

“Don’t you believe it. It was five hundred miles 
away, and he had to walk every inch of that long way 
for days and days.” 

“Do tell!” gasped Tubal, “reckon that’s quite some 
li’l walk!” 

“Indeed it is! Perhaps you’d be interested to know 
that the reason Booker was poorer than you was be¬ 
cause he lived back in the days when he and his fam¬ 
ily were all slaves, and his little log cabin had only an 
earthen floor, the roof leaked abominably and there 
was no glass in the window. Booker’s shoes were 
wooden ones, with rough leather on top, and how they 


Not as Black as He Was Painted 187 

squeaked when he walked! Booker’s shirts were made 
of rough flax and after he grew up he wrote a book 
about himself in which he said those dreadful shirts 
felt like prickly chestnut burrs against his body for 
several long, horrible weeks until the worst of the 
prickles became partly broken in. That was really 
being poor, wasn’t it?” 

Tubal nodded, spellbound. 

“Even after America freed all the slaves, Booker’s 
family were as poor as ever, and although he was very 
young and small he had to earn money in big salt fur¬ 
naces by going to work at four o’clock in the morning 
—even before the sun was up!” 

Tubal sighed sympathetically. 

“But just like you, Booker wanted to read. He had 
never met a single negro who could read, but plenty of 
them wanted to, so a little school was started. But 
would you believe it? He couldn’t go, because his 
family made him work in those salt furnaces! But 
did he let that stop him? Not a bit of it! He took 
lessons at night, and although he must have been 
mighty sleepy, yet Booker actually learned more at 
night than the other children learned by day. So 
finally his family decided he could work in the fur¬ 
naces from four in the morning till nine, then go to 
school.” 

Tubal sighed at such a busy life: “Poor Booker!” 

“Yes, poor—and almost nameless, too, for the very 
first day he found that when the roll was called all the 
other scholars had two names, while his one and only 
name was Booker. But quick as a flash he made up a 


188 Some Boys and Girls in America 

second one, and when the teacher reached him he had 
the new part of it all ready: ‘Booker Washington , sir !’ 
he piped up; and Tubal, my boy, neither he nor that 
teacher nor those other scholars ever guessed that such 
a little negro boy could ever become so famous that 
every person in the whole United States seems to know 
all about him.” 

Tubal’s eyes grew big as saucers: “What’s that you 
say? Famous? That poor li’l Booker got famous?” 

“Indeed he did! Famous enough to start an enor¬ 
mous school, to be friends with the President of the 
United States, to dine at the White House, to be in¬ 
vited to speak before huge audiences. . . 

“Bet it was one of them colly places learned him how 
to be famous,” Tubal nodded. 

“You’re right, a college started it. But just let me 
tell you how he got there! For he had heard of Hamp¬ 
ton Institute where poor colored boys could earn their 
way through, and even although Hampton was five 
hundred miles away he started to walk there, earning 
money along the road to buy his next meal, and sleep¬ 
ing in the queerest places! Once, for several nights, 
he slept under a wooden sidewalk in the city of Rich¬ 
mond! All night long he could hear people walking 
over him, people who never dreamed there was a little 
colored boy under their feet—a boy who would some 
day be famous. Then when he finally got to that 
school, he was so dusty and dirty and shabby from his 
tremendous five-hundred-mile walk that the teacher 
didn’t want to admit such an unattractive new pupil. 
She tried to turn him away from the door!” 


The Watermelon Bribe 


189 



You may be sure that Mammy had tried her hand at persuading 
Rastus to rake the lawn, but even watermelon did not have the 
charms that Booker’s story had! For it was as if he saw his 
own dreams coming true in this other poor boy who went to a 
“colly.” 








Not as Black as He Was Painted 191 


“Oh me, oh my!” groaned Tubal mournfully. 

“Exactly. But Booker looked so downright broken¬ 
hearted that she gave him one chance. The recitation 
room needs sweeping,’ she said, ‘take this broom and 
sweep it!’ So Booker took the broom and swept that 
room once. He swept that room twice. He swept that 
room three times. Then he dusted it once. He dusted 
it twice. He dusted it three times. He dusted it four 
times! Until there wasn’t a speck of dust big enough to 
fit on the end of the littlest pin in the world. Then he 
call the teacher.” 

“I ’spect she jess natcherly admired that room,” 
,Tubal beamed. 

“She did! So Booker Washington stayed, and he 
worked his way all through Hampton with the same 
thoroughness he used in sweeping rooms. And after he 
graduated he started a little school of his own. That 
little school grew into a big school. And Booker Wash¬ 
ington grew from a poor boy into an unknown young 
man, then into a famous well-known man. But the 
fine part of this story is that Christian folks have a 
school in this very State where boys just exactly like 
you can earn their way through, and I’m going to ar¬ 
range with Aunt Amanda for you to go there.” 

Tubal jumped to his feet in stunned delight: “Me 
go to such a school! Oh, Mistah Fairfax, sah! Oh 
me, oh my! But say, Mistah Fairfax, don’t you go 
troublin’ Miss Amandy ’bout me till I rakes the lawn 
for her. Miss Amandy she’s a speck like that there 
teacher Mistah Booker Washington once had. Miss 
Amandy’s got her eye on me to figger out what kind 




192 Some Boys and Girls in America 

of a boy I’se gwine to be; and to tell the truf, Mistah 
Fairfax, sah, I’se nuffin but a lazy li’l no-account shaver 
jess at present. So jess gib me time to rake that lawn 
once and rake that lawn twice and rake that lawn three 
times till there ain’t a leaf left nowhere on the grass, 
all the same as Mistah Booker Washington fixed that 
room of his all neat and tidy. Jess gib me time!” 

So Mr. Fairfax gave him time. 

And that is how it came to pass that to-day Miss 
Amanda often smoothes her black taffeta ruffles and 
delights to tell all her southern neighbors how Tubal 
is not as black as he was painted: “He’s a right smart 
boy, Tubal is! How do we know what any colored 
boy can become if he only gets an ideal and sticks to 
it? I reckon from all I hear that that mission school 
is as proud of Tubal as I am!” 


XVII 


IF WISHES WERE HORSES 

* | \HERE is nothing quite like a county fair, with 
the cattle lowing in their corner of the fair 
grounds: “Look at us! Where will you find cows that 
give such milk?” And the pigs grunting: “Here’s 
bacon for you! And sausage—um-m-m!” not to men¬ 
tion the hens that clucked and the horses that neighed. 
. . . All in all, Leonidas had never been so excited. 
Just after daybreak, Mammy and he had started trudg¬ 
ing the long, dusty miles to the fair, and his most won¬ 
derful day began when he saw the flags and the tents 
and heard the penny whistles. But would you believe 
it? All on account of a horse the glory of the day 
departed. 

Words fail me to tell of that horse: of her glossy 
mane and the star in her forehead, and her beautiful 
tail. Leonidas walked round and round her, the same 
as he saw the white folks doing, and then all of a 
sudden the owner said: “Would anybody like to see 
Black Beauty read ?” 

Everybody would, of course, and that astonishing 
horse read whatever they told her to read. Cardboard 
letters were laid on the ground and the owner would 
say: “Now, Beauty, spell your name.” While the 
whole crowd waited breathlessly, that horse daintily 
tiptoed back and forth among the letters, picking out a 
B, an E, an A, a U, a T, a Y. Not that Leonidas knew 
193 


194 Some Boys and Girls in America 

what these letters were, himself; but he understood 
that she was doing it properly because a big cheer went 
up from the crowd, and because Black Beauty arched 
her glossy neck and neighed in a very superior way, 
quite as if it were a difficult trick, and she’d like to see 
any other horse try it once! 

As for Leonidas, he felt truly ashamed. For if any¬ 
body had suddenly (or even not suddenly!) asked him 
to spell his name, he wouldn’t have known which of 
those letters to point out first or second or third. It is 
not pleasant to think that a horse knows more than a 
boy! And the more Leonidas thought about it the less 
he liked it. Every once in a while, all day long, he 
would sneak away from the snake-charming lady to see 
what Black Beauty might be doing now. Once she was 
adding up figures! Yes, actually. And another time 
she was counting with her front hoof, pawing the 
ground the correct number of times. It was all very 
maddening to Leonidas, for he could not count, either. 

He went to the gypsy woman and had his fortune 
told. I think she had probably seen him hanging 
around Black Beauty’s stall, for this is the thing she 
said to him in her deep mysterious voice, as she read 
his palm: “I see a horse enter your life—a black horse 
—the horse will show you the way to rise in the world 
—nothing will ever be the same for you again.” This 
was magnificent guesswork on the gypsy’s part, yet 
every word of it came true. 

For Leonidas was so impressed that he took one last 
look at Black Beauty, then said: “Guess I ain’t gwine 
to let no horse get ahead of me, no, sah! ’Pears like 


195 


If Wishes Were Horses 

I’se jess naturally ’bliged to go to school somehow or 
other and beat that horse.” Indeed, it reminds me of 
the old proverb: If wishes were horses then beggars 
would ride. 

But his mother was aghast: “Land sakes, Leonidas 
Finly, what you think you are—white folks ? You, and 
school? What for you want book-learnin’? Jess tell 
me that! Where-all you gwine find that school? Jess 
tell me that? Where-all you gwine find money to pay 
for learnin’? Huh—tell me that?” 

“Dunno!” sighed Leonidas after every question, “but 
I jess gotta beat that horse, Mammy.” 

“Well, reckon mebbe!” admitted she; and that is how 
it happened that on a certain day, months later, you 
could have seen Leonidas starting off for our mission 
school in that state, with his clothes tied in a bundle 
slung over his shoulder. 

“Stuff your head plumb full of larnin , ,” said 
Mammy, waving her hand forlornly. 

“ ’Deed I will,” nodded Leonidas. 

“Mind you, don’t get too grand for the likes of us,” 
begged the neighbors, standing in the doors of their log 
cabins, with their hands on their hips, to watch the won¬ 
derful sight of the first plantation boy trudging jauntily 
off to school. Why, even their preacher had never been 
to school! It was a mighty fine thing to go so many 
miles away from home and do nothing but read out of 
books. They cast a little halo over school: the grandeur 
of it, the high and solemn awfulness of books for break¬ 
fast, books for luncheon, books for supper. Mammy 
would have been a powerful lonesome widow-woman 


196 Some Boys and Girls in America 

in her silent old log cabin, if she had not dreamed of 
Leonidas in those halls of learning, shining as no boy 
had ever shone before. 

Then one Saturday night late in December his first 
vacation brought him home, and her opening words 
were very much to the point: “Don’t you go settin’ 
down, Nidas, not twill I’se had it proved to me how 
you kin beat that horse! Jess lemme hear you read.” 

So Leonidas pulled out his primer and soberly read 
off the words: “I see the cat. The cat sees the rat.” 

“Land sakes,” said mammy enthusiastically, “you 
done that just as easy as that ole horse done it, Nidas. 
Yes, sah, every bit as easy! Reckon you’se powerful 
eddicated, boy.” And early the next morning she hur¬ 
ried from cabin to cabin among her neighbors to tell 
the wonders of “Nidas’s monstrous eddication.” In¬ 
deed, the news spread so much faster than she dreamed 
on that Sunday morning, that by church time the col¬ 
ored preacher sat in his pulpit waiting for Leonidas and 
Mammy to arrive. 

“Professor,” he called, “I’d jess admire to hab you 
occupy de pulpit dis mornin’, and read de scripters and 
offer de prayer, Professor.” 

Leonidas could hardly believe his ears, and looked 
over his shoulders to see whom the preacher was ad¬ 
dressing. Then it dawned on him that it was him¬ 
self : that even his four short months of school were 
such a rarity in that plantation neighborhood that the 
preacher felt that the two of them were now equals. 
“Come on up, Professor, you, Nidas Finly, you! 
Don’t you be so modest. Guess the Lord done bless 


If Wishes Were Hobbies! 


197 



'jbUl 




gPUC/mOAT j^> 



It’s when wishes get to be hobbies that beggars ride off to 
school: for a hobby is a favorite occupation—and you can see 
for yourself that if every little negro boy in America should 
make Education his special hobby then nobody down south would 
ever again call an ignoramus “Professor.” 















Out of every ten persons in the United States, one is 
a little (or an old) Leonidas—let’s help them all to feel 
that “Black is such a lovely color”! 




If Wishes Were Horses 199 

you with book-lamin’ aplenty jess so you’se gwine to 
rouse us all. Come on up, Professor.” 

Mammy gave Leonidas a vigorous shove from be¬ 
hind : “Be you deef?” she chuckled, “jess you step up 
and speak out your heart, honey.” 

“But, Mammy,” whispered Leonidas in an agony of 
shame, “I’se no professor! I kin only read out primers 
yet.” 

“Poof!” snorted Mammy, “you’se all the professor 
we got, so up you gets.” 

So Leonidas sat on the tiny platform, while per¬ 
spiration trickled down his embarrassed cheeks and 
shame filled his soul. 

“Tell you what, Nidas,” the preacher whispered 
generously, “seein’ you’se so scart, supposin’ you jess 
preaches, while I reads de scripters and thanks de Lord 
we got one scholard at last.” 

So the preacher thanked the Lord in no uncertain 
terms that after all these years of darkest stupidity 
here was Leonidas Finly gettin’ eddicated: and O 
Lord, make Nidas a right smart scholard; fill his mouf 
with rousements dis mornin’, make his words like roar¬ 
in’ lions to scare de ig’runce out of all dis ig’runt con’- 
gation, Lord.” 

And everybody murmured “Hallelujah! Praise de 
Lord!” until even the startled Leonidas realized the 
great pity of it: that here were people who reverenced 
knowledge above all other human qualities, and yet 
he was the only educated Negro whom they knew. 

“So now I’se tellin’ you the secret about me that I 
never meant to tell,” he said, “for I thought I was 


200 Some Boys and Girls in America 

shamed by the horse that could read. But land sakes, 
folks, when I got to that there mission school, if Fse 
not put with the youngest li’l bits of chillen in that 
whole school. Yes, sir, them li’l bits of youngsters 
learnin’ A B Cs and scratchin’ them on slates. Down 
I sat with them—I so mighty big, like mountains; they 
so weeny li’l, like valleys. And how them li’l chillen 
done titter and giggle and carry on when they see such 
a monstrous big boy in their class. So, folks, Fse 
not a professor: Fse jess a stupid Primary, readin’ 
primers. But all Fse got to say this mornin’ am: 
neider a colored boy nor a colored girl ain't gwine get 
on if they don’t get eddicated ’fore they gets ole like 
me. Jess send your chillens to that Mission School, 
brethren and sistern. God Almighty’s down there at 
that school, ’deed He am! God Almighty, He’s got a 
grand big job for black folks all the same as for white 
folks. For the learneder a boy gets, the biggerer the 
job God give him, sure. Amen.” 

Which really was a much better sermon than the col¬ 
ored preacher could have preached, for the proof of a 
sermon is the way people practice it—and all over that 
little southern plantation discussions were started in 
the small log cabins, and many an Old Black Joe said 
to his young black Joe: “Reckon there ain’t no sense in 
you bein jess a no ’count Negro forever more; reckon 
if you ’tended school you’d be a right smart professor 
all the same as Nidas. How ’bout lettin’ Nidas fetch 
you back to his school with him ?” 

' Tse read y> pappy!” grinned the young black Joes. 
And wishes were horses, once more. 


XVIII 


BLACK IS SUCH A LOVELY COLOR 

T>LACK is such a lovely color. 

But the Sammies did not think so. They an¬ 
nounced the fact in a duet, which is the way the Sam¬ 
mies always said things and did things and thought 
things! For what is the good of being twins if you 
are not alike? They began their alikeness way back 
in cradle days, when the little black knob on Flotsam’s 
face formed a nose precisely like the little black knob 
on Jetsam’s face, and the comical rosebuds that formed 
their two mouths were so identical that you could 
always persuade yourself that Flotsam was Jetsam. 

Even mammy never knew them apart until, as they 
lengthened out into real children, Flotsam went into 
skirts and Jetsam into trousers. Then, of course, it 
was easy enough to know who was who; yet even in 
that skirt-and-trouser-age the same thoughts buzzed 
simultaneously inside their two woolly black heads . . . 
surprising thoughts, that never had a single thing to 
do with what you might suppose such thoughts would 
be concerned. Were they toting home mammy’s 
bundles of wash from the big white houses on the hill? 
Well, never by any chance were they actual bundles of 
wash—no, no! They were wings of God’s teenty- 
weenty li’l angels, those fluttery li’l snow-white wings 
jess covered from tip to tip with li’l fleecy fedders! 

201 


202 Some Boys and Girls in America 

The Sammies told each other the most remarkable 
stories about those fedders and those wings and those 
angels ... for that is the kind of Sammies they were: 
full of dear little, queer little visions; full of clear little, 
sheer little lazinesses. They would lie on their backs 
by the roadside for hours at a time (with mammy and 
her soapsuds waiting for the wash, mind you!) while 
they finished up the angel-fedder story. But, of course, 
that was a good while ago when they still lived way 
down south in Dixie, where mocking birds sang down 
at them from tree tops, and br’er rabbits loped across 
their sunny roadway. 

“Bre’r Rabbit’s gone to fetch the li’l angels’ break- 
fas’,” Flotsam whispered. 

“Gone to fetch a sweet potato for the li’l angels’ 
breakfas’,” echoed Jetsam. 

Oh, it was very nice down south in Dixie, with mock¬ 
ing birds and rabbits and bundles of wash! It was 
quite, quite different when pappy took them all up norf 
to live. Although at first it sounded well enough . . . 

Diplomacy had thought it sounded just too grand 
for words. But then ’Plomacy was getting on in years 
—most nineteen—and there were parts about moving 
up norf that jess natcherly seemed powerful nice to 
any one so aged! Wages, for instance: why, ’Plomacy 
had heard tell that you could earn well nigh onto twelve 
dollars a week, up norf. ’Deed you could! Reckon 
you could buy jess the grandest red dress with twelve 
dollars a week. And a hat—my, what a hat you 
could buy—all loops and bows and furbelows! And 
shoes ... 


Black Is Such a Lovely Color 203 

“Shoes ?” snickered the Sammies, wriggling their 
twenty bare toes contentedly. “What for you want 
shoes, ’Plomacy?” 

“For to wear on my li’l black foots!” said she. 
And the Sammies thought it too funny for words, 
although possibly nice. For there was a certain song 
about wearing shoes in heaven: almost any moonlight 
night you could hear the Negroes gathered round their 
cabin doors humming that song: 

“I got shoes, you got shoes, 

All God's children got shoes. 

When I get to Hebben, 1 put on my shoes, 

And walk all over God's Hebben! 

Everybody what's talkin' 'bout Hebben ain't goin' 
there — 

Hebben, Hebben, Hebben!" 

But, of course, you expected to need grand things like 
shoes in heaven: all of a sudden “going up norf” 
sounded exactly like going to heaven. It was then 
that the Sammies began to like the idea well enough. 

So they never shed a single tear on the last day when 
—with dozens of bundles in their arms—they left the 
old plantation forever. Diplomacy cried. And mammy 
cried. Even Neuralgia rubbed his coat sleeves over his 
nose. ’Ralgy said it was jess because it tickled him; 
but the Sammies knew perfectly well it was tears. As 
for them, they looked at the familiar row of little cabins 
with perfect unconcern; they saw the lazy blue smoke 
spiraling out of chimney-tops, and it never gave them 


204 Some Boys and Girls in America 

a single parting twinge. For weren’t they going to a 
grand and glorious place that was jess as good as 
heaven, especially as you didn’t have to be sick and die 
to get there? Why cry, therefore? They clutched 
their bundles, and were enormously cheerful. Also, in 
a big hurry to be off! For quite the best part of trab- 
b’ling norf would be the trip itself. 

“Oh, lookee! lookee! Jess see the funny en-jine puff 
smoke out of his li’l black pipe, Flotsam! Jess like 
pappy smokes tobaccy.” 

“Oom-a! Oom-a!” crooned the girl-Sammy, hug¬ 
ging her bundles ecstatically. “And jess see all the 
queer long houses hitched end to end with li’l wheels 
underneath ’em!” 

For this was the best she could do to describe the 
wonder of a railroad train; although the wonder soon 
began to seem more like a blunder when they had to 
change cars, and change cars, and change cars! It 
was no fun rushing up and down station platforms, 
asking bewildered questions, going in all the wrong 
directions, sitting in all the wrong seats, getting cinders 
in their eyes. 

With one voice the poor Sammies announced to an 
uninterested world that trains were jess puffeckly dref- 
ful things, ’deed they were. If you tried to stand up, 
they tumbled you down; if you tried to drink water, 
they spilled it all over you; if you tried to sleep, they 
blew whistles to frighten you awake; if you went to sit 
on the shady side of the aisle some one was sure to say: 
“ ’Scuse me, but I’d thank you kindly to keep off my 


Black Is Such a Lovely Color 205 

seat!” If you put your boxes in the aisle, somebody 
stumbled over them and scolded you; if you held the 
boxes in your laps, they grew monstrous heavy and 
made your legs go to sleep; if you put them out of the 
way under the seat, then you forgot them when you 
changed cars, and then, oh, then, what happened to the 
precious lost-forever bundles! Trabb’ling was a dirty, 
dangerous, disagreeable business and you longed with 
all your Sammy souls for that lovely city called “up 
norf”: for, unlike trains, cities would surely stand still. 

Oh, but they didn’t! Their city was made up of 
rumbling carts and clattering cars and dashing autos 
and whizzing motorcycles: hand-in-hand their family 
needed a hundred eyes to see the hundred astonishing 
things bent on running over Negroes newly arrived 
from down south in Dixie. Nobody cared! The city 
walked by on its unfriendly feet. A thousand other 
Negroes had recently moved to town. What did it 
matter if seven more arrived ? Nobody wanted them— 
not even the landlords. 

“Think I’m going to rent my palatial flats to a parcel 
of colored folks? Well, not much! Think I’m going 
to have these kids of yours demolishing my fixtures, 
marring the elegant decorations, and disrupting the 
peace of the neighborhood? Seven of you, too! 
Good-by!’’ (Pleasant man.) 

“Sakes alive!” chuckled pappy. “Reckon I nebber 
did hear such a voculaberry! Nebber!” 

“Seven ain’t so many,” said mammy warmly. 
“Reckon I wouldn’t part with one of them, pappy.” 


206 Some Boys and Girls in America 

“Same here!” said pappy. And the Sammies liked 
the warmth of that, in spite of such a cold reception 
from “up norf.” 

And then, then, after the horrid trip and the almost 
endless job of getting a home, came that terrible busi¬ 
ness of finding they were colored wrongly! The Sam¬ 
mies began to suspect this on their first day at school; 
but the second day they knew it; the third day they 
hated it; and the fourth day—oh, the fourth day it 
nearly broke their lid hearts. ’Deed it did! They 
said so in a doleful duet. 

“Ain’t nebber gwine to go near that drefful ole 
school again,” moaned Flotsam. 

“Ain’t nebber gwine to go inside them drefful doors,” 
groaned Jetsam. 

“Ain’t nebber gwine to learn to read,” cried Flot¬ 
sam. 

“Ain’t nebber gwine to learn to count,” sighed 
Jetsam. 

“Ain’t nebber gwine to look at anudder of them puf- 
feckly horrid, stuck-up, white chillens,” wailed Flotsam. 

“Ain’t nebber gwine listen to anudder word them 
drefful white chillen say,” quailed Jetsam. 

“Why for they done stick their white noses up in 
the air like they was jess too grand to notice li’l colored 
Sammies like us?” Flotsam howled. 

“Pokin’ their fingers at us like we was something 
awful, jess on account of us bein’ black!” scowled 
Jetsam. 

“Callin’ us names, jess on account of us bein’ black!” 
sobbed Flotsam. 


Black Is Such a Lovely Color 207 

“Throwin’ stones at us, jess on account of us bein' 
black!” throbbed Jetsam. 

“Won’t sit beside of us, jess on account of us bein’ 
black!” grumbled Flotsam. 

“Won’t let us play their stupid white games, jess 
on account of us being black!” mumbled Jetsam. 

“Oough!” blubbered Flotsam. 

“Oough!” echoed Jetsam. 

“I hates ’em!” sniffed Flotsam. 

“I ’bominates ’em!” sniffed Jetsam. 

“Reckon I jess hates bein’ black-all-over anyways!” 
snapped Flotsam. 

“Reckon I jess ’bominates bein’ black-all-over!” 
rapped Jetsam. 

So you can see that, as a duet, it was a complete 
success; but as a “do it,” it was a complete failure; for 
they were reckoning without old uncle Ephraim. 

“Jess you lissen, honey,” said he, as he poked the 
embers that November afternoon, “how-all do you 
’spect the Lord God feel when you don’t like bein’ 
black? Why, honey, the Lord God jess love black! 
’Deed He do. The Lord God He got a powerful tender 
spot in his heart for the black-all-over folks. ’Pears 
like He jess can’t stop makin’ us; ’deed He can’t! 
‘Black am such a lovely color,’ says He, so He fills up 
Africa with a hundred million black folks. Deed He 
do! You kin learn it in joggerfy lessons in school. 
Yes, sir, a hundred million black folks down in Africa 
am a right smart lot of folks. ‘Jess a puffeckly lovely 
color,’ says God Almighty to Hisself. So then if He 
didn’t start in fillin’ up America with black folks, too! 


208 Some Boys and Girls in America 

Yes, honey, 'deed He did; till now, when they counts 
the folks in this nice big United States they discobers 
ten million black folks and ninety million white folks. 
Honey, that's jess presactly how the Lord God wanted 
it to be. And when you learns 'rithmetic, bimeby, you 
can divide ninety million white folks by ten million 
black folks and find out that there am one blessed black 
pusson to ebery nine white pussons in this land.” 

“Nine!” repeated Flotsam. 

“One out of ebery ten!” smiled Jetsam. 

“Presactly!” said ole Uncle Ephraim. “So now, 
honey, jess supposin’ it am bedtime in America: does 
you reckon that when the chillens says their prayers 
that the Lord God look down from Heaven and ask: 
‘Am that a li’l white chile a-prayin’ ? Well, bless your 
heart, you dear li’l white chile; I loves you to dis¬ 
traction, 'deed I does!' And then, bimeby, He look 
down again and He say: ‘What? Am that a li’l black 
chile a-prayin’? Jess get up off your knees, you li’l 
black chile, I ain’t got no sort of use for you! Ain’t 
gwine to listen to a single sol’tary word you say!’ Oh, 
Sammies, does you reckon the Lord God eber say any- 
such-a-thing?” 

“No!” gasped Flotsam. 

“Nebber!” gasped Jetsam. 

“Course not! Course not! Why* I reckon mebbe the 
Lord God smile all over His lovely face, and I jess 
reckon He whisper to the angels: ‘Sh! Sh! Quit your 
singin’, angels, and listen how my li’l black chile pray. 
Ain’t it sweet? Oh, I’se powerful 'tached to that li’l 
black chile of mine! Reckon I give him a right hard 


Br’er Rabbit Totes Home the Wash 209 



The dear Sammies, of course, are lying under a shady bush 
just behind the little hill in this picture, day-dreaming: all about 
how liT Br’er Rabbit reckoned he’d be right ’bliging, so he up 
an’ toted home the wash-basket to Mammy, wid li’l Massa Mock- 
in’-Bird a-settin’ and a-singin’ (real saucy-like) on the handle 
twill Mammy she declared to goodness ’twere jess presactly like 
Hebben! ’Deed yes! 








How the Sammies do hope that you will read this 
verse for yourselves and be toward them like little 
guardian angels! 





Black Is Such a Lovely Color 211 

job by makin’ him black-all-over; but listen— Ain’t he 
done fine to-day? Jess listenP And the Lord God, 
He smile and He smile and He smile, all on account 
of one li’l good black chile. The angels, they smile 
too, cause why up in heaven folks is folks, and nobody 
can see a scrap of difference betwixt the black ones and 
the white ones. Fact! Cause why the Lord God don’t 
see no difference His very own self. No, sir, not one 
li’l shadow of a difference.’ , 

“Wish all the white folks down on earth knowed 
how the Lord God feels about all this,” sighed Flotsam. 

“Wish all the white folks down on earth knowed 
how the angels feel about all this,” sighed Jetsam. 

“Well, all they got to do, honey, is to read where 
it am writ down in their Bibles as big as life,” said 
Uncle Ephraim. Whereupon he propped his spectacles 
on his nice black nose and read in Romans 2: 11— 
“ 'there is no respect of persons with god.’ 
Which am all the same as saying that the Lord God 
ain’t cold to some folks and warm to others. He’s all 
the same to everybody.” 

“Oh!” chuckled Flotsam. 

“Oh!” chortled Jetsam. 

“ ’Pears like the Lord God thinks black am a lovely 
color!” said Flotsam. 

“ ’Pears like the Lord God thinks black am as lovely 
a color as white!” said Jetsam. 

“Presactly!” nodded ole Uncle Ephraim. “So all 
I’se got to say to you am this: if ebery black pusson 
made his pertikler nine white pussons admire to know 
him, why then the hull United States would be like 


212 Some Boys and Girls in America 

heaven, and nobuddy would put on airs and have re¬ 
spect to certain pussons and disrespect to udder pus- 
sons. See?” 

“I’se sure gwine to choose my nine white folks in 
school to-morrow,” tittered Jetsam. 

‘Tse done chose my nine white folks now” giggled 
Jetsam. 

But as for me, I’m so afraid that maybe neither of the 
Sammies will choose you, that this story is put in here 
for your special benefit, so that you can start each new 
day by whispering softly: “Black is such a lovely 
color!”—for maybe you haven’t realized yet how the 
Lord God is expecting you to feel toward every one of 
his black children whom you may meet. 


XIX 


MOVABLE PAPPY AND MAMMY STAND-STILL 

1 ^TANCY NORTON was going to make a long 
trip in the train, and it was to be an even greater 
adventure than it sounds because she was to go abso¬ 
lutely alone. No mother, no father, no aunts, no 
uncles, no guardians. Just she—and the train! When 
you are nine years old, it is really quite an adventure 
to go traveling all the way from Cleveland to Albany 
alone; but although Nancy liked it immensely her 
father, at the Cleveland end of the journey, was rather 
nervous about it; and her mother, waiting for her at 
the Albany end, was even more nervous. But Mr. 
Norton hunted up the negro porter on the parlor car, 
and put Nancy in his care: “Porter,” he said, smiling, 
“this young lady will bear watching.” 

“Yes, sir, I sees she’s a mighty ’tractive little missy!” 
said the porter, winking one eye at Mr. Norton and 
the other eye at Nancy. 

“Not exactly my meaning,” said Nancy’s father with 
some amusement, “but suppose you see that she doesn’t 
get into mischief from here to Albany. Her mother is 
visiting there and will meet this train.” 

“I see, sir; and I’ll ’tend to her, sir. I got a lot of 
chillen back home, myself, and I know they takes a heap 
o’ minding. Much obliged, sir. Good-by.” 

213 


214 Some Boys and Girls in America 

There was the rumble of wheels, the crash of 
couplings, the jar of brakes . . . and the first thing 
Nancy knew, her father outside on the platform seemed 
to go sliding and whizzing past her window. She felt 
a queer marble sticking in her throat as that dear 
familiar figure disappeared from view. 

But the porter had a cheerful grin especially re¬ 
served for parting occasions like this: “Smile up your 
face, missy, and here’s a footstool to put your feet on, 
’cause I sees your legs don’t stretch to the floor.” 

“That’s so, they don’t!” agreed Nancy, suddenly 
fascinated by the shortness of her legs and the grand¬ 
ness of resting dusty shoes on a green velvet cushion. 

The porter then hung up her hat and coat on a little 
hook. She began to feel immensely at home. 

“Goin’ to be mighty light travelin’ to-day; ’pears to 
me like you could almost call this your private car, 
missy. Anything more I can do for you right now 
before I hop along to see about the other folks?” 

Nancy said no-thank-you in her politest manner, for 
never had any one been so kind to her at such short 
notice. Moreover, ten minutes later, this new friend 
returned and sat down in the chair ahead of her: 
“Reckon I might just as well stay and visit, since no¬ 
body ain’t needin’ nuflin. You gettin’ along O. K. ?” 

“Oh, yes, indeed, thank you!” Nancy smiled; then, 
screwing up her courage, asked the question that could 
not keep another moment: “I hope you won’t mind my 
asking, but are—are you from Africa?” 

The porter chuckled: “ ’Spect I am! Wouldn’t be at 
all surprised, missy; only not me, of course, nor my 


Pappy and Mammy 215 

own pappy; but ’spect maybe my grandpappies were 
all fetched over from Africa. Slaves, you know. ,, 

“Oh, but aren’t you sure?” Nancy asked in a small 
disappointed voice. “I was hoping maybe you were 
the son of a chieftain—sort of a prince, perhaps. I 
was hoping maybe you’d been in the jungles and met 
rhinoceroses face to face, and crocodiles and elephants 
and lions and Livingstone and everything.” 

The porter gasped. “Sakes alive! No, not me! But 
I’ve heard tell of them rhinoceroses and elephants and 
lions; yes, sir, I even seed ’em at the zoo, once; but 
never in all my born days have I heard tell of a living- 
stone! Reckon I’d run a mile if I met one of them 
livingstones in a jungle; reckon I’d scoot faster than 
this here train if I met one of them! ’Deed I would!” 

Nancy laughed outright in sheer amazement: “Liv¬ 
ingstone isn’t an animal,” she gasped; “he’s a man: 
David Livingstone, didn’t you know? He walked 
thousands and thousands of miles clear across Africa 
where no other white man had ever been before, he 
named lakes and rivers and cataracts and things, he 
discovered big waterfalls, and just as if this wasn’t 
enough for one man to do, he converted the black sav¬ 
ages and did his best to get the slaves set free.” 

“Slaves set free?” repeated the porter. “Now do 
tell! How come I never heard of this gent’man be¬ 
fore? For ain’t I got one son named Abraham Lin¬ 
coln Lovely—’cause why Mistah Lincoln he freed the 
slaves way back in the days of my grandpappy ? And 
ain’t I got another son named Frederick Douglas 
Lovely—’cause why Mistah Douglas he made the sil- 


216 Some Boys and Girls in America 

veriest-tongued speeches for freein’ slaves ’way back 
in them Abolition days ? Ain’t I got a daughter named 
Harriet Beecher Stowe Lovely—’cause this Stowe lady 
wrote ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ to make folks see what 
slavery was? But never in all my born days have I 
heard tell of this here Mistah David Livingstone dis¬ 
covering rivers and freeing slaves. But say, missy, how 
about naming my brand-new little baby for this Mistah 
Livingstone? I declare to goodness, ’pears like we 
never will get that little kid named. ’Pears like his 
mammy and me run clean out of names; his mammy 
depends on me for fetchin’ home a name, seem’ I travel 
and got such grand opportunities for catchin’ names. 
So we’ve saved that baby and saved that baby till he’s 
most six months old, but not a name has he got. So 
you just give me any pertiklers ’bout this Livingstone 
gent’man and I’d thank you kindly.” 

“Oh, I’m brimful of him,” chuckled Nancy; “you 
see, I belong to our band.” 

“Do tell!” gasped the porter, much impressed. 
“Reckon you don’t toot a horn, though! No, reckon 
you performs on some nice little gentle instrument.” 

Nancy gave a delighted giggle: “It isn’t that kind 
of a band at all, it’s a mission band. Just boys and 
girls, you know. We meet at the church every other 
Friday after school, to study mission books and hear 
stories about the great heroes who have made the world 
Christian. This year we read a book about Africa. 
It’s called ‘Livingstone, The Path-Finder.’ There’s a 
lion on the cover. The lion tried to chew up Mr. Liv¬ 
ingstone, but he didn’t—quite. It’s very exciting. 


217 


P a PPy and Mammy 

Then there's another book called ‘African Adventures,' 
and it tells how African boys still try to do the things 
that Livingstone once did for the Negroes. I guess 
Abraham Lincoln Lovely and Frederick Douglas 
Lovely would like those books. I'm going to tell my 
mother. She’s on the missionary committee, and she 
loves everybody in the world just alike, whether they're 
black in Africa or black in America or yellow in China. 
She prays for them, you know: so God will help her 
never to notice the color of their skins, but just do the 
things to help them inside. See ?" 

“Urn!” murmured Mr. Lovely, softly. “She must 
be an awful nice mammy to have.” 

“She is!” agreed Nancy, wistfully. “I’d like to see 
her this very minute, too. Albany is a dreadfully long 
way off, isn’t it ? But perhaps you've read some books 
about Africa, yourself?” 

Mr. Lovely shook his black head. “No, missy, I’d 
admire to read some, but generally speakin’ I’m on the 
hop all day long, takin’ care of the folks in my car. 
Reckon the onliest book I got any room for in my 
pocket is a pocketbook!” 

You can see from conversation like this that by the 
time the train reached Albany, Nancy and that porter 
were good friends; and ten minutes after Nancy's 
mother had boarded the Pullman car on her way to 
New York she began hearing all about the friendly 
black man: “So, mother, wouldn’t it be really very nice 
if Mr. Lovely named his newest baby David Living¬ 
stone Lovely? And couldn't I send him my Living¬ 
stone stories ? See, here's his address. Mr. Lovely says 


218 Some Boys and Girls in America 

they’ve saved up the baby for lack of a name so long 
that the neighbors think they don’t love the poor child 1 
But he says Mrs. Lovely is so stand-still that she de¬ 
pends on Mr. Lovely’s travels to catch the latest thing 
in names! But it seems a pretty big responsibility for 
me, doesn’t it?” 

“Dearest, you’re the choicest girl in America!” her 
mother whispered into Nancy’s curls. And I really 
think maybe she was, for she even remembered to tell 
Mrs. Norton how small the pockets were in Mr. 
Lovely’s white porter’s jacket, but wasn’t there some 
special little book that would just fit inside? 

There was! And that is how it happens that to-day 
Mr. Lovely has a little pocket Testament in his coat, 
and if you could see the front page you would read: 

“To Mr. Lovely, 

from his friend, Nancy Norton ” 

Now just pretend that you were one of the five 
Lovelys: suppose you were Movable Pappy—wouldn’t 
you love the mere feel of that friendly little Bible in 
your pocket? Wouldn’t you squeeze in time to read a 
verse or two even on the busiest days ? Or suppose you 
were Mammy Stand-Still—wouldn’t you think David 
Livingstone the bravest of names for your adorable 
black baby? Or suppose you were the Lovely boys, 
wouldn’t you like to get letters like this: 

“Dear Abraham and Frederick, 

I met your father on the train. I was alone and he 
was good to me all day. He told me about you. I named 


Off to Discover America 


219 



What would we ever do without trains to carry us all over 

“The land of the free 
And the home of the brave”? 

For even in this one small book just see how everybody travels 
somewhere: Pa Tucker goes to fight the war; Mrs. Banana Beppo 
goes straight from her ship to a train; Petros journeys off to 
his meadow; the Sky Pilot travels westward to Shining Mark; 
One Lung goes westward to China: little pictures bump south¬ 
ward in barrels; Sammies bump northward on red plush seats; 
while as for Mr. Porter Lovely you can see for yourself that 
traveling is a very every-day matter to him. With so many 
people off to discover America, therefore, how cheerful a land 
this would be if every one copied Nancy Norton! 



f 


Let’s discover America with our suitcases filled with 
Wishing Caps, Hearty-Hand-Shake Gloves, Golden 
Rule Shoes, Missionary “Shower” Umbrellas, and Cov¬ 
erall Criticism Coats! 







221 


Pappy and Mammy 

your new brother. So now my brother Ned and I are 
sending you two books about Livingstone, for then 
maybe you will bring up the baby to fit his name.” 

* * * 

And you would, wouldn't you? For it is from such 
simple kindly deeds of friendship as Nancy's that the 
negro boys and girls in America will learn that color is 
a very little thing in Christian eyes. It's what you are 
that matters! 


XX 


“let nothing you dismay” 

HERE were such preparations going on at the Big 



A House on Christmas Eve that everybody who 
was not working seemed terribly in the way. That is 
why Miss Frances decided to play eavesdropper with 
her guest, the Girl Who Hated To Have Black People 
Near Her. 

She was such a pretty girl and when she wrinkled up 
her dear little freckled nose in disgust she really made a 
charming sight: “Somehow or other,” she would say, 
“I just can’t bear to sit beside a colored person in the 
street car. I suppose I really ought to try to get over 
it. But I just can't, somehow or other.” 

“Oh!” said Miss Frances in her quietest, softest 
voice, “how sorry that must make you feel.” 

“But why in the world should I feel sorry?” asked 
this Girl Who Hated To Have Black People Near Her. 

“But surely you aren’t proud of being so un-Chris¬ 


tian?” 


“Un-Christian?” echoed the astonished girl. And it 
was then that Miss Frances had an inspiration: “Come 
on, my dear, they’re so busy here trimming trees and 
wrapping parcels that you and I can easily slip down 
to Uncle Gustus’s house and play eavesdropper. Come 


Ole Uncle Gustus was poking the logs until a hun- 


222 


“Let Nothing You Dismay” 223 

dred sparks went dancing up the chimney, and the two 
eavesdroppers crept into a shadowy corner of the room 
before it grew too bright with firelight. Outdoors the 
snow came floating softly down as it only comes on 
Christmas Eve—in big white powdery flakes; and there 
was the sound of sleighbells somewhere near by, busy 
announcing the delivery of last-minute Christmas par¬ 
cels at the white folks' houses. The little black children 
sighed enviously: it must be a heap of fun to have 
sleighs with sleighbells leavings presents at the door. 

Ole Uncle Gustus heard those sighs and quickly said: 
“Lemme see, now; reckon you got your packages tied 
up, eh? Reckon mebbe you got a package all tied up 
with the name of Ole Uncle Gustus in right big letters 
on the outside—ain’t that so ? Sure! Reckon you each 
got a package tied up with the name of Mammy Sylvie 
all writ so nice and neat across it, eh? Sure! Reckon 
there am packages for Bessie! And packages for 
Jessie! Sure! Sure! And nobody ain’t gwine to 
forgit Gerry jess ’cause she am working in a store so 
big and fine and ’portant! No, sir; reckon ebery chile 
in this here street am going to be ’membered on Christ¬ 
mas morning; but what I’se out to discober right now 
am whether you-all got your present ready for the Lord 
Jesus, eh? How ’bout you, Gerry? And you, Bessie? 
And you, Jessie?” 

“Why no, Uncle Gustus, ’spect I jess natcherly don’t 
know what you mean.” 

“How can we-all give presents to the Saviour?” 

“Sakes alive,” sighed Uncle Gustus, “mebbe I better 
tell you ’bout Mistah Smif of Smifville. Well, this 


224 Some Boys and Girls in America 

Mistah Smif was once right poor, and he come to live 
on a certain farm. From the time the sun riz up in 
the morning to the time she set in the ebening, this 
here Mistah Smif he done nuffin but plow his farm 
and sow his farm and weed his farm and harvest his 
farm, till the fust thing anybody knowed by and by if 
Mistah Smif weren’t a right rich man! Yes, sir, he 
loved that farm twill it growed up biggerer and betterer 
than any udder farm. But he ain’t putting on no airs, 
Mistah Smif ain’t; he ain’t acting like he thought his 
neighbors were no account neighbors just ’cause he had 
more money. No, sir! Mistah Smif started right in 
makin’ ’provements in dat village: there ain’t nebber 
been no pavements for folks to walk on, so Mistah Smif 
he paid for the smoothest pavements you ever seen, 
and folks liked Mistah Smif’s pavements a right smart 
bit betterer than the drefful ole muddy streets. And 
Mistah Smif, he started water works and laid pipes and 
digged reservoirs, and folks liked to have the water 
piped indoors ’stead of toting it in buckets from the ole 
village well. Then Mistah Smif he built a church, and 
he built a liberry, and he built a school, and fust thing 
folks knowed if he hadn’t ’lectric lights in the dark 
streets at night and nobody eber had to use ker-sene 
lamps no more. Oh, yes, sir, Mistah Smif done so 
terrible much that folks named that village Smifville, 
for Mistah Smif. ’Deed they did. And on Mistah 
Smif’s birthday they tuck a big holiday and fetched 
presents to Mistah Smif for to tell him how powerful 
nice and easy he made living in Smifville. They sung 
songs to Mistah Smif and I reckon he got a heap o’ 


“Let Nothing You Dismay” 225 


thanks from the time the sun riz up twill she set. 
Well, this kept up and kept up and kept up, year after 
year, twill folks reckoned time by Smif’s Day, and 
ebery chile in town wished Smif’s Day was right now 
—all on account of the presents and the candy and the 
’citement. Oh, yes, indeedy, the birfday cel’bration 
kept up and kept up and kept up, but would you be¬ 
lieve it, honey? half the time folks sort of forgot all 
’bout Mistah Smif. ’Deed they did! The new folks 
in town only knowed how Smif Day was the most fun 
day in the whole year. Yes, sir, li’l by li’l folks ain’t 
’membering Mistah Smif no more at all, they don’t 
fetch him no presents or go sing him no songs. Mebbe 
they feel he ain’t so necessary now they got ebery thing. 
Mebbe he live in his own house all quiet and by hisself, 
twill it growed easy to forgit Mistah Smif was ’round. 

“Oh!” sighed Bessie. 

“Oh!” sighed Jessie. 

“Too bad!” sighed Gerry. 

“Exactly!” sighed ole Uncle Gustus. “Smif Day 
jess as much fun, but why call it Smif Day when all 
Mistah Smif’s presents was give to some udder per¬ 
son? And Mistah Smif ain’t ’vited to dine with folks. 
Reckon likely he says to hisself, says he: ‘Ain’t I give 
them ’provements? Ain’t I made life easy and happy 
and safe? Reckon they jess got so used to ’prove¬ 
ments they ain’t ’membering to think of the ole man no 
more.’ And he was right lonesome. ’Deed he was! 
Lonesome on Smif Day.” 

“Poor Mistah Smif!” cried Bessie and Jessie in a 
shocked duet. 


226 Some Boys and Girls in America 

Ole Uncle Gustus poked the fire again until new 
sparks danced up the chimney: “Well now, that am 
only a story, for there ain’t no Mistah Smif I eber 
heard tell of; but Bessie and Jessie—how about God 
Almighty? Ain’t He give us houses to live in? ‘But 
houses ain’t enough,’ says He, ‘so I better give them 
food.’ So He give us that food. ‘But food ain’t 
enough,’ says He, ‘I better give them raiment.’ So He 
give us that raiment. ‘But raiment ain’t enough,’ says 
He, ‘I better give them ’provements.’ So he give us 
all the ’provements you eber heard tell of. But houses 
and food and raiment and ’provements still don’t seem 
enough to God Almighty, so He give us Jesus Christ. 
And that am the very biggest present of all. So the 
birfday of Jesus Christ am called Christmas Day, and 
at first folks fetched presents to the Lord, all the same 
as in that story ’bout Mistah Smif. And I reckon you 
’gree with me that Christmas am the nicest, most fun 
day in the whole year, ain’t it?” 

“ ’Deed yes!” cried the twins. 

“ ’Deed yes!” agreed Uncle Gustus. “But Bessie 
and Jessie, li’l by li’l folks done forget the reason why 
of Christmas, all the same as folks forgot ’bout Mistah 
Smif. Yes, sir, folks give presents still on Christmas 
—presents to mammy, presents to pappy, presents to 
ole Uncle Gustus, presents to Jessie, presents to Bessie, 
presents to Gerry; but they done forgit to give one 
single sol’tary li’l present to the Lord Jesus Christ. No, 
sir, not one single sol’tary li’l present. And I reckon 
mebbe Christ feel right lonesome on Christmas Day: 
‘I give them all I had,’ says He, real gentle and sad, 


“Let Nothing You Dismay” 227 

‘and now they so busy ’joying theirselves that they 
forgit. But I love them all the same as ever. All the 
same !’ But Bessie and Jessie and Gerry, I reckon He’s 
right lonesome.” 

“I reckon!” sighed the twins, and at once began won¬ 
dering what they could give the Saviour. “For there’s 
not one little leastest present left over,” they sighed. 

“And not a cent of money left over,” sighed Gerry, 
who worked all day in a store. 

“Tut! Tut!” chuckled Ole Uncle Gustus, “those ain’t 
the onliest presents. But Bessie and Jessie, how ’bout 
giving your hands and feet and voices to the Saviour, 
this way: ‘Lord Jesus, reckon you knows I’se powerful 
lazy and forgetful. But here am my hands, Lord Jesus, 
they’se gwine to be kind hands to everybody; and here 
am my feet, they’s going to run your errands all year, 
Lord. And here am my voice, Lord; You won’t 
nebber hear it scole and quarrel; gwine to be your voice 
all year, Lord. Take these here Christmas presents 
with all my love, thank You kindly.’ ” 

“Oh, yes, Uncle Gustus, we could surely give our 
hands and feet and voices!” said the twins enthusiasti¬ 
cally. 

“Sure! And as for you, Gerry, how ’bout getting 
down on your knees and saying: ‘Lord Jesus, reckon 
You know all ’bout me hating the white folks, ’cause 
why they have the very things I wants for my very 
own self. Now, Lord Jesus, I’se aiming to make You 
a Christmas present; ’deed I is. Not tied up in red 
ribbons, Lord: but I’se gwine to give you my hate. 
Yes, Lord, you ain’t nebber gwine to catch me hating 


228 Some Boys and Girls in America 

folks for being white, or hating them for having things 
I’d like to have. The more I thinks of it, Lord Jesus, 
the more I’se certain sure You wouldn’t have made so 
many of us black folks if You hadn’t got a very special 
love for us—a real ’thusiastic loving love! So, Lord, 
I’se gwine to be satisfied to be black, and here am my 
ole hate—jess You take it and keep it for me, Lord, 
It am the biggest, hardest present I got for your Christ¬ 
mas, and help me always be a li’l black shepherd of 
Kingdom Come. Amen, Lord.’ ” 

Gerry gave a sob: “I’m going to do it, Uncle Gustus, 
I’m going to do it.” 

“ ’Course you am, honey chile. Guess God give you 
such a heap o’ blessings you jess natcherly picks the big¬ 
gest one to give on Christmas Day.” 

So that is how it happened that when the two eaves¬ 
droppers had quietly tiptoed back to the big house, the 
pretty White Girl Who Hated To Have Black People 
Near Her was tucked in bed by Miss Frances, who 
whispered: “Dearest, don’t forget to get your present 
ready for the Saviour!” 

“B-but I d-don’t s-seem to h-have a s-single s-solitary 
t-thing to g-give Him,” sobbed this pretty girl, and her 
heart was full of deep dismay. . . . 

But toward midnight there came floating through the 
snowy air the quaint old Christmas carol: 

“God rest ye merry gentlemen, 

Let nothing you dismay, 

Remember Christ, our Saviour, 

Was born on Christmas day.” 


The Forgotten Present 


229 




*Twos the night before Christmas—and 

Everybody had everybody else’s present all nicely tied up in 
jolly red ribbons entirely ready for To-morrow, when suddenly 
—that story about Mistah Smif of Smifville! Instantly, every¬ 
body began to see what a shocking thing it was to have for¬ 
gotten Him who was mankind’s First Christmas Present. Surely 
you will never forget again, yourself. 





Mankind’s First Christmas Present came down to 
earth that whosoever (black! yellow! red! brown! 
white!) believeth on Him should not perish but have 
everlasting life. 


“Let Nothing You Dismay” 231 

“Oh, dear Lord Jesus,” prayed the Girl Who Hated 
To Have Black People Near Her, “what a silly, con¬ 
ceited, horrid girl I’ve always been, thinking I was so 
superior and delicate and lovely just because I had 
white skin. Oh, Saviour, now that I understand how 
Thou dost love both black and white alike, take away 
my hate from me forever—it will be my Christmas gift 
to Thee. And, Saviour, make my hands gentle and my 
voice friendly, and may the very look in my eyes be 
gentle and kind toward each of Thy little black shep¬ 
herds of Kingdom Come. Amen.” 

And if every single one of us should do the same, I 
think the angel’s song would surely come true: 

“Peace on earth, good-will among men.” 


THE END 




























































































































































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